


To the Ground

by sfumato



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Brief Molly Foster & Will Graham, Cannibalism, First Time, M/M, Pining, Post-Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, Slow Build, Surgery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:36:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28845444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfumato/pseuds/sfumato
Summary: If Hannibal had known it would take an apocalypse to bring them together, he would have burned the world to the ground long ago.Pre-written. Updates on Wednesdays.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 101
Kudos: 310





	1. Chapter 1

“Excuse me,” Will mutters as he pushes past a woman’s shopping cart. He doesn’t have to meet her eyes to feel her annoyed glance crawl up his back. 

Around him, the grocery store is bustling, layers of voices mixing with the holiday music coming in through the speakers above. “Don’t you think this would’ve been easier yesterday?” he asks Molly as he approaches their cart. He’s never liked grocery shopping. 

She turns toward him after picking up a head of lettuce. “You remember last year. I don’t want any comments from Aunt Eloise about how we bought the beef two days in advance.” 

Will sighs. Yes, he remembers. He holds up two boxes of pasta. “Which ones?” 

“I don’t know. What do you think, Wally?” she asks the boy hanging on the cart. 

“The curly one,” Wally says decisively. He’s a kid who's always sure about what he wants, and it manifests in everything he does. Will likes that about him, envies it in part. 

“Curly one it is,” Will says, setting it down next to the lettuce. Wally smiles briefly before his face settles back into its ever-present seriousness. 

Will places a hand atop his head, and the kid, pouty and short, gazes up at him evenly. “Can you do something for us?” he asks, and after his hand receives a nod, he turns him and points to the left. “Go get us some toilet paper from that aisle over there.” 

Wally nods again and runs off, lighter from having a task of his own and determined in his own 11-year-old way. 

Molly, who has moved on to picking out tomatoes, looks up at him. “How do you think he’s holding up this year?” 

Will shakes his head. “Always hard to tell with him.”

“You’re alike in that way,” she notes, “but you can always tell better than I can.” 

“That sounds like something you resent,” he says curiously. He rips off a plastic bag for her and rubs it open. 

“No, never. I appreciate it.” 

Will hums. “I think he gets better every year. It doesn’t weigh on him as much anymore, and nor does his responsibility.”

“Yeah,” she huffs, swiping away her blonde bangs. Always an indicator that she’s getting upset. “What I do resent is David making him promise that. What a responsibility for a dying father to place on his six-year-old.” Will says nothing, but places a calming hand on her back. 

“Dad!” Wally calls. “Dad, can we get this?” He comes bounding up to Will, holding out a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. 

“I thought I told you to get toilet paper,” Will says. 

“There wasn’t any. Please, can we get it?” he pleads. 

“We have cereal at home, Bud. You don’t even like cinnamon.” 

He watches Wally deflate as Molly speaks from behind him. “No toilet paper? That’s strange.”

“And no water and no bread,” a lanky, graying man comments from the cart beside theirs. 

“People are stocking up,” his plump wife adds. 

Molly furrows her brows. “For what?” 

Most days they make an effort not to watch the news. 

The man waves dismissively. “Ah, people going crazy about nothing again. Something happening in Boston—”

“And Reston,” a woman chimes in from beside Molly. “The government is closing down the roads, I saw it. They’ve set up a detour for the parkway.” 

“My brother-in-law said it’s some sickness spreading,” the husband informs. 

“Sickness?” Will echos. 

“Nonsense, Jonah,” Jonah’s wife laughs and addresses Will, who skips out on the eye contact. “My sister said it’s a major gas leak.”

The other woman steps in again. “In two cities at once? Really.” 

Will tunes them out as they continue to discuss amongst themselves and turns to Wally when he feels him tug on his coat. 

“Please?” he asks again, shaking the cereal. 

“Go put it back,” Will instructs, nudging him toward the aisle. 

Wally’s frown settles deeper, and he makes his way to return it. Will feels a twinge of guilt as he watches his orange and black jacket disappear into a sea of others. 

They have to take the detour on their way home. 

The cracked asphalt of the residential roads bumps under their tires as the glowing, red sun sets ahead of them. Molly likes to listen to 70s music as she drives, and Will is in the process of tuning it out when he hears Wally pipe up from the backseat. 

“Look!” Wally points to the centerline of the road. Ahead of them, lies a large hunk of meat, still wet and bleeding. 

“Poor animal,” Molly frowns. “Birds must have gotten to it.” 

“Must have been starving. Can’t even tell what it was,” Will says as they pass it. For a second, he imagines a torn-off piece of human skin glistening in the mess, but quickly clears the image from his mind. He swallows, suddenly imagining Hannibal somewhere in the trees. 

His heart beats a little faster. 

“Must have broke down,” he hears, bringing him back to the present. 

“What?” Will asks, looking at Molly. 

“Car.” She nods ahead of them at a blue Volkswagen on the side of the road. All of its doors have been left wide open. 

“Yeah. Must have.” Will turns toward the window and lets the 70s music fill his head instead of the skin and Hannibal. 

Hannibal would be for later. 

\---

The fireplace warms him as Will sits on the couch in front of it with Wally’s head in his lap. With one of his hands, he runs his fingers through the boy’s dark hair, and with the other, he holds the book he’s reading aloud. 

The gentle clatter of utensils comes from the kitchen, where Molly is making dinner. The dogs snooze contentedly in front of the fire. 

Wally has stated that he is too old for a lot of things, but never says anything of this. The first time he had asked Will to read to him, it was to reread the first novel his late father had read to him.

As he turns the page, he catches a glimpse of Wally’s expression, thoughtful and fully invested in the characters’ plight. He pictures the scenes and characters running through his head as they did through Will’s own on the rare occasion he was able to scrape up the money for a new book in his childhood. 

He hopes that the vivid feelings and motivations fade for Wally with time, unlike they did for him. 

The phone rings in the kitchen and Molly lays down her knife, rushing to pick it up. 

“Hello?” Will hears from the kitchen, and then she comes to the doorway of the living room. “It’s Uncle Elliot,” she says with the phone to her neck, and by that, she means one of her many brothers who are driving up from Tampa. 

Wally looks up at Will when he stops reading. “And then what happened?” he urges, nudging Will’s hand with his head. Will just smooths down his hair as Molly listens and the fire crackles. 

“That’s a shame,” she says after a pause, tone dejected, a bit concerned. “No, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. We’ll be ready for you when you get in.” She walks over to sit on the back of the couch, pushing her husband's hair out of his face when he turns to look at her. “Charleston’s been blocked off. They’re gonna be late.”

“How late?” Will asks, and she relays the question through the phone. 

“6 P.M. tomorrow.” 

“What do you think, Wally?” he asks, glancing down at the boy. “Think you can wait for presents until your cousins get here?” Wally crosses his arms and nods. 

Molly smiles at them. “We’ll have dinner ready then and— Hello?” The phone, audibly to Will, crackles and beeps in her hand. “Hello? Elliot?” She gets up as she examines the tiny home phone screen. “Huh. Our service is gone.”

Will reaches to pick up his cell from the end table. “Internet, too.” 

“Well, then,” Molly sighs as she heads back to the kitchen. “Dinner in ten.”

Will slides the bookmark in between the pages and pats Wally’s side to get him up. “Go wash up.”

“Wait, Dad, just finish the chapter. Do you think Ben will find Henry?” 

He is referring to the characters in their book, which Will finds surprisingly applicable to his own life, given its absurd plot. In the last chapter, Henry tricked his best friend, Ben, into something he didn’t want to do, which turned out to be for Ben’s benefit. Before he found that out, upset, Ben cast away his friend into a fantasy land. 

“I think he will. Someday,” Will replies as Wally sits up. 

“Do you think Ben feels bad for banishing him into The Barren?” 

Will pauses. “I think he does. Do you know what regret means?” he asks the boy gently. 

“When you wish you didn’t do something?”

“Exactly.”

“Do you regret anything?” Wally looks at Will as if he’s transparent. There’s no use lying to a kid like him. 

“Sometimes,” Will tells him. “You can never do everything right. Now, go.”

They have chicken and Wally’s favorite curly pasta for dinner, and afterward, when Wally is in bed, Will and Molly wrap presents, which proves to be quite a feat because, for the first time since they got married, Molly’s entire family is gathering at their house. 

Just the thought of it all drains him. 

Will doesn’t have any blood relatives to invite. Or friends, for that matter, but that’s beside the point. It always is when Molly brings it up, anyway. 

In bed that night, Will can’t seem to fall asleep, which isn’t unusual, but more frequent as of late. He wonders if the clock has already ticked past midnight and it’s now Christmas. 

Molly’s family will be coming over at noon, and Molly, herself, lays sound asleep next to him. She has gotten used to his constant tossing and turning and learned to sleep through it all. She doesn’t even wake up anymore when Will shoots up, gasping for breath and terrified. 

He used to wake her up when she first started sleeping through his nightmares, seeking comfort, but he doesn’t do that anymore. She never helped him in any real way anyway. On the nights when the darkness from the past comes to consume him, there seems to only be one train of thought, a flame, dangerous and bright, that can scatter it. Hannibal. 

Will pictures the way Hannibal would sit him down in his office after years apart and dismantle his monsters with him metaphor by metaphor and limb by limb, burning them to a crisp. 

In this house, there is laughter and a fireplace, but not the conflagration he misses. There is also security, but with that, longing. More and more often, he finds himself retreating to Hannibal’s office: during their banal conversations over dinner, while throwing a baseball back and forth with Wally outside, during sex with Molly. 

Will has been staring up at the ceiling for what seemed like hours now, and he finally closes his eyes. 

_“Back already, Will?” Hannibal asks in his mind, voice gliding over him and sending shivers down his spine._

_“You know I can’t stay away,” Will sighs. He taps his fingers on the leather armrest. “You like that.”_

In his fantasies, Will imagines Hannibal is happy to see him. In reality, maybe he has already moved on, regretted his choice. 

_“How long do you plan for this to continue?” Hannibal’s eyes stay on Will as he gets up from his chair and slowly begins to wander the room. “This escapist fantasy of yours must have a limit of efficacy. There must be a tipping point, at which your desire will force you to see me face to face.”_

_Will shakes his head. “I have gotten awfully good at denying myself of my desires. Better than you remember.” He looks up toward the bookshelves and tries to convince himself that what he said is true._

_The rows of books have started to blur into a mess of colors in his mind; he is forgetting the room chunk by chunk. The curtains had become mismatched long ago. Were the red stripes thick or the white?_

_It stings him._

_When he turns away from the shelves, Hannibal is standing right behind him, a bit too close, looking at him with the polite adoration Will caught when he woke up after Muskrat Farms, when Ben cast away Henry._

_“It is a shame. After all that time we spent working to bring your desire to the surface.” Hannibal reaches for his hand, taking it between his own two, twisting his wedding band with his thumb and forefinger. “Tell me, Will, what do you desire most of all?”_

_Will looks at their hands together. For a second, Hannibal’s appear transparent._

He is about to answer when his eyes fly open at a sudden noise. They darted around the dark room, seeing nothing, but he can recognize that sound anywhere: splitting wood, a door torn off its hinges. It’s the sound he spent all his time dreading in his old house in Wolf Trap. 

Molly has sat up next to him as well. The dogs start to bark up a storm downstairs, and soon their woofs and howls travel outside into the yard. 

While he quickly and quietly pulls on a pair of sweatpants and shoes, he hears two voices come from downstairs, two pairs of shuffling feet. Their words carry without consideration for volume, but Will can’t make out a full sentence no matter how hard he tries. 

“Will,” Molly whispers, panicked, from her place on the bed. “What do we do?” 

“Call the police,” Will orders as he crosses back to the bedside drawer, takes out his M9, and begins the work to load it. Molly reaches over and grabs her phone. 

The artificial light illuminates the lines in her face. “The service is still down.”

Will glances toward the door. “I’ll go. Get Wally and get in the car.”

“No, I’m going with you.” She reaches in the drawer Will is about to close and gets his knife. “There’s two of them. There should be two of us.”

Will is about to object, but Molly wastes no time. She’s at the door before he is. 

They creep down the stairs, not making a single noise. Will feels Molly’s silent breath on his neck. She grips the knife at her side and Will keeps the gun pointed out in front of him. 

Once they get to the bottom, Will motions for her to investigate the moonlit porch outside while he goes into the living room. She nods and they split, the darkness of the hall engulfing him as he turns away from the front door. 

In the living room, which he now sees is empty, he can see that the back door leading to their wrap-around porch has been opened. 

The silence that consumes the house is the type that rings in the ears deafeningly, calling all attention to it. Piercing it, he hears something outside creak slowly and steadily, and then, the air is saturated with a wordless scream unlike one he’s ever heard before, but unmistakably Molly’s. 

As he rushes to the front door without regard for whatever lurks in the dark corners of their house, her scream grows garbled, like she’s choking. Indeed, when he stops in the doorway, the first thing he sees is the pints of bubbling blood spilling from her mouth as she lays convulsing on the wood, throat torn to shreds. 

The second thing he sees is the woman crouched over her. No, not a woman, but an animal, an alien, a monster clad in a dress tearing at Molly’s stomach. It looks up at him with crazed eyes— emotional, yellowed, bloodshot eyes and screeches, “Rain! Rain! Rain!” 

It starts toward him and he pulls the trigger, sinking a bullet into its stomach. When it doesn’t falter, he fires three more times. The creature presses toward him still, and he aims higher, firing a final bullet through its head. Only then, brains splattering wetly on the wall behind it, does it crumple to the ground. 

He rushes toward his wife, whose lovely, gray eyes have rolled to the back of her head. The whites of them have started to cloud over with a yellow screen, red seeping into their corners. Will reaches out to touch her arm, but retracts his hand quickly when he sees that her skin has begun to peel like the creature’s had, revealing the red muscle underneath and bleeding beyond control. 

Will swallows dryly and backs away, heart beating out of his chest, eyes darting from place to place. This cannot be Molly, it can’t, he thinks, but alas, it is. 

For once, he finds himself wishing he were in a nightmare, but he isn’t; the blood splatter on his face feels too warm and familiar, and the gun in his hand is too heavy and cold. 

It takes a rustle in the woods for him to remember the second voice he heard, the second creature stalking them. He turns away from Molly and rushes back into the house, up to Wally’s room. 

He finds him trembling under the bed, silent tears racking his small body. Shock still coursing through every inch of him, Will pulls Wally out and shoves his feet into the closest pair of shoes he finds, lacing them up quickly and speaking to him in an urgent whisper. “We need to go. Now.” Will stands and pulls him to his feet, grabbing a jacket out of his closet. 

“Where’s Mom?” Wally rasps. When Will doesn’t answer, he asks louder. “Where’s my mom?” 

“Shh!” Will presses a finger to the boy’s lips, listening for footsteps or a whisper or any sound at all. When there is nothing, he pulls Wally with him toward the door. 

Halfway down the stairs, he hears a man’s voice. Only he knows it doesn’t belong to a man. “Suntan! Mountain! Caveat…” It’s coming from the kitchen. 

They pause on the stairs for a few moments before Will leans down to Wally’s ear, grips his hand, and whispers, “Run.” They take off, bounding down the rest of the stairs and down the hall. Will looks back to see the creature coming after them. It’s faster than the first one, able to run. 

“What is that?” Wally cries. “What is that!” 

Will grabs the car keys off their hook as they cross the threshold. Wally halts at the sight of his mom, but Will pulls him forward. 

“No! We have to help her!” When Wally starts to struggle, Will hoists him over his shoulder, ignoring his pounding fists and kicking legs. “What are you doing? She’s dying!” 

Will doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s way past that point. 

He unlocks the car and throws Wally inside as the creature descends the few steps in front of their porch. 

Slamming the door shut, he starts the car. The creature throws its body into the door, cracking the glass, and Wally shrieks. Will puts the car into reverse and pushes all the way down on the gas pedal, rushing the car out of their long driveway and onto the road. 

The creature runs after them, hunched, arms swinging in front of it. It howls into the night as they speed away.


	2. Chapter 2

748 drawings of Will. That’s how long Hannibal has been in prison. 

He works on one each day and places it neatly into his folder. If he likes it enough, he asks for a piece of tape to hang it up. 

Hannibal draws, eats, and exercises on his own time, whenever it suits him, though he has put effort into keeping an adequate sleeping schedule. 

For the past two years, his life has been simple, boring at times. 

Occasionally, he talks to whom he deems second-rate psychiatrists, supplying content for their second-rate articles, and occasionally, he is accused of the murder of another long-since-disappeared person. In that case, he simply confesses if it’s his and denies it if it’s not. It makes no difference to him, though the former gets him some additional media attention and a chance to complain to Alana about not letting him wear a suit to court. 

Less importantly, it earns him an additional life sentence. He considers it a small price to pay for the amusement he receives from the altercations with his keeper. 

Christmas Day is no different from any other day. He gets up, reads a section of Philosophy of Classical Sculpture II in bed, has his breakfast, and sits down to draw. 

Will’s body comes easily to him, and so does the shape of his lips, his hands. Today, he draws the two of them together, a moment from his memory, or at least one he wishes was. 

He draws Will as he would appear in front of the fireplace in his Florence apartment, flames flickering over his face, casting stark shadows and highlights. That is how he always appeared to Hannibal: with a battle between light and dark waging inside his head. 

Hannibal wonders if he’s still fighting today. The struggle is beautiful to him even though the outcome is not always desirable. 

A small price to pay.

He draws himself quietly admiring Will, just as he would have if their escape to Florence had gone to plan. Perhaps, how he would admire him now if Will asked him to, allowed him to. 

In the drawing, they’re facing each other, Hannibal’s expression expectant. Will looks as if he is about to open his mouth to say something. The drawing does not portray the interaction itself, but the fragile anticipation of it. 

As he’s putting down the finishing strokes, he hears a shout from outside his door. 

“Stop!” It’s his guard, voice gruff and commanding. Hannibal recognizes it from when he orders him to stand at the back of his cell. “Stop or I’ll shoot! This is your final warning!” 

He sounds scared, and this piques Hannibal’s interest as he sets his pencil down. 

A short moment passes before the promised shot rings out. It echoes down the halls and is immediately followed by three more. 

Hannibal approaches his glass barrier and the crude, pained scream that pierces it makes him purse his lips in distaste. Never would he lack this much grace in his own death, he thinks. 

The guard’s body thumps against his door on its way down, and he wonders how terrible a shot the man must have been not to drop his assailant in the four shots he took.

Additionally, he wonders who the lucky patient is who managed to escape. Perhaps, it is the new man downstairs; there has been a lot of talk about him, after all. Hannibal wishes it not to be him out there— he doesn’t need more attention.

Maybe Hannibal should organize an escape of his own. The idea amuses him and he toys with it for a few seconds, but is soon drawn from it as the sounds of tearing flesh reach him. He quirks an eyebrow, imagining the scene he now wishes was his doing.

Then, slowly and darkly, like an ominous premonition, a wide trail of blood seeps under his door. It flows in a river to the middle of the room, where it pools at a slight dip in the hardwood. 

The tearing continues for a few minutes, long enough to bore him. He had expected another wave of action by this point. Perhaps, more guards coming to capture the patient or a shootout further down the hall as the patient acquires his victim’s gun. Or, better yet, he thinks, the murderer shooting through the lock on his door with the intent to kill the Chesapeake Ripper, and Hannibal having to convince them not to. Oh, what an excellent exercise that would be. Before that, though, he’d greet them with a bright, “Hello. Do you have an appointment?” 

No, that wouldn’t be wise, but it does make him grin. 

He watches the blood gather and eventually does hear more gunshots, but in an adjacent hall, and then on the floor below his. As he wonders what could be causing such a ruckus, a low, dampened feeling of danger rises in his chest. It consists more of knowledge than emotion and is soon overtaken by a much stronger feeling, prominent and sharp, one of opportunity. 

Whoever seems to be attacking the hospital has to reach him at some point, and he, of course, will be ready. He walks over to his desk and folds the drawing he was working on into a neat square. He unzips his suit at the top and tucks the paper neatly inside. Then, he sits down on his bed and waits. 

Minutes pass as horrid screams travel up and down the halls, as do sets and groups of running feet. All the while, he plans what he will do and where he will go. If the gun off his deceased guard has not already been taken, he will steal it. If it is not there, a sharpened pencil off his table will have to do. It will be easy enough to steal a car amidst the commotion, and if time allows, an outfit as well.

After that, his only thought is to go to Will. 

However, even as he tries his best to imagine it, he cannot predict how their reunion would proceed, only how he would like it to. 

What he wants and what would happen no doubt have miles of difference between them. Just as an eager hello and a disgusted goodbye, forgiveness and slamming the door in Hannibal’s face would have miles between them. 

What Hannibal estimates as half an hour goes by and all the noise dies down. He assumes whatever situation transpired has been dealt with, but even as an hour rolls around, nobody comes to clean the mess in his room. 

At two hours, Hannibal has his nose stuck back in Philosophy of Classical Sculpture (II) and is waiting for his lunch to arrive. When it fails to, the situation, now lacking any sort of entertainment value, benefits for him, and interfering with his schedule, starts to evoke annoyance in him. 

He regrets not pressing Alana further about installing a call button in his cell. He knocks on the divide instead, which usually gets someone’s attention, either by the sound or by the security cameras. 

“Breathe. Brand culprit,” he hears from outside his door. 

It sounds like the guard. Hannibal hears rustling against the door, the splatter of something falling, and then his voice again. “Window, cream.” A fresh rush of blood sneaks under his door, coating the crusting trail, as the man continues to move.

This can’t be the guard, Hannibal thinks. Then, who had screamed, and whose blood is in his cell? Perhaps he had lived, but why was he not transported to a hospital? The situation seems to be growing stranger by the minute, supplying him with auditory puzzle pieces that don’t fit together any way he tries them. 

“Pardon,” he calls out. 

After a moment, he hears the shuffling of feet and then: “Rain!” A heavy thump against his door. Another. And another. “Rain!” 

Hannibal takes a thoughtful step backward. Is it not the guard at his door, but the madman who killed him? Had he been laying beneath his door all these hours and through all the commotion? Or is he, himself, finally living up to his insanity plea? 

The doors shudder at another blow. The design of them looks dainty, but Hannibal knows the structure is fortified. At once he finds himself thankful for it. 

The thumping continues for the rest of the night, and aside from it, the building is silent. Hannibal feels his stomach grumble as he lays on his cot. Like lunch, dinner is not delivered. 

By this time, he knows that he and his madman are the only ones in the complex, and once he gets used to it, it’s no bother. The authorities will come tomorrow and sort the whole of it out. 

When his eyelids start to droop, the thumping becomes a welcome, rhythmic white noise that lulls him to sleep. 

\---

In the morning, Hannibal wakes up parched. As he stares sleepily up at the ceiling, he realizes that the man outside is still slamming into the doors, still muttering nonsense under his breath. 

“Pine ocean, cry. Kid pencil,” and after a pause, “Rain… rain…”, and then another string of random words. 

He wishes there was a clock in the room, but alas, the only thing that tells him time has passed is the pain in his stomach. Before, meals were what he used to orient himself in time, but something tells him breakfast isn’t coming. 

After relieving himself, he pushes the button to flush, but no water comes through. Of course, since there is no one to turn it on. 

When he walks over to his bookshelves, nothing on them catches his eye; he has read all the books anyway and new ones aren’t due to arrive until next week. He wants to exercise, but decides against it, haven’t had anything to drink. 

Having gone through all of his daily activities but one, he sits down to draw. He remembers the drawing he tucked away, but doesn’t take it out. It feels at home pressed against his chest. 

He runs through the different scenarios he could depict, the expressions he could put on their faces, but can't settle on one. He gazes toward the door. 

“What shall I draw today?” he asks aloud, with enough volume to reach his companion. 

“Rain, rain, rain!” he screeches, hitting the door with more force now.

“Excellent choice, my friend,” Hannibal commends and takes a fresh page off the thinning stack at the corner of his table. 

He decides to draw Will by himself today, dragging the dogs inside after he lets them out and it starts to pour. One of his arms strains to pull Winston toward him by the collar as the dog digs at something in the grass, and the other arm reaches for Buster, who sits in place, oblivious to Will’s struggle. The rain has flattened his curls as well as the dogs’ fur, and Will’s flannel has become soaked and sticks to his body in what Hannibal considers all the right places. He has always thought Will to be handsome, and more so than any other man he’s met. 

Some of his drawings end as sketches and others, like the one today, he puts the utmost detail into. It’s the one thing he can do to pass the time, so he pays special attention to the pattern on Will’s shirt, its wrinkles, and the hairs of the dogs’ muddy coats. Will will have to give them all baths when he brings them in. 

After a few hours, he starts to get a headache that he knows is from his impending dehydration. He hasn’t had a drop of anything in well over a day now. He rubs at his forehead with the back of his wrist, and continues to draw, but a few moments later, the lights flicker and shut off. 

The room is plunged into such darkness that when his eyes adjust, he can barely see his fingers in front of his face, much less his paper. In the dark, the thumping starts to wear on him, and he wonders where in the world the man, injured, dehydrated as well, gets his energy. 

The throbbing of his head becomes annoying, and officially having nothing to distract himself with, he opts for a nap. 

\---

No windows, no light, no schedule, just thumping. Upon waking up, all sense of time is eliminated.

When he sits up, the darkness swims for a moment before floating gently back into place. His headache is worse. Much worse. On one hand, it is a sign that he hasn’t slipped completely into dehydration, but on the other hand, the only thing he has the energy to do is fall back into bed. 

He cycles through bouts of uncomfortable rest lasting from what feels like hours to minutes, maybe even a day, until he wakes up and finds his headache gone. His medical expertise tells him this is a bad sign, but that is but a passing thought when he feels a certain giddiness set in. 

He feels borderline euphoric as he gets up to pee. He feels his way along the wall to where he knows the toilet is, his lips crack painfully when he smiles as he remembers the water being shut off. This is spectacular news to him, though he can’t quite place why. 

The joints in his elbows ache as he reaches up to undo his suit, and through all the mess in his head, he is mindful to keep his drawing from falling out. 

As he finishes— or maybe he doesn’t pee at all— his nostrils flair at a faraway scent coming closer. A nasty aftershave. The thumping has stopped and he hears the door creak open behind him, spilling light in from the hallway. He zips up his suit quickly before turning to find Will on the other side of the glass. He looks tired. 

“I had hoped you would take my advice on the aftershave.” Hannibal smiles weakly. 

“Hello, Hannibal.” Will comes closer to the glass, the backlight illuminating his messy hair. “Quite a predicament you’re in.”

“Unfortunately, yes, but I must ask if you are referring to the dehydration or my incarceration.” 

“Both could have been avoided. The former by avoiding the latter.”

“Then, I would have never seen you again,” Hannibal says. 

“You could have had me anytime you liked in your memory palace.” Will walks along the glass and Hannibal follows him. 

“I do.” They stop. “However, I know it isn’t real, and therefore it does not satisfy me.”

“This moment really makes it worth it, then.” Will grins and places his hand on the glass. Hannibal follows suit. 

“Yes.” 

“Is that me?” Will nods toward the table, at the drawing laid out on it. Hannibal hums in affirmation. “Do you have any more?”

“750, actually,” Hannibal answers and smiles when Will raises his eyebrows. 

“Let me see them.”

“As you wish,” Hannibal says softly, and as he goes to move away from the glass, Will says something he can’t quite understand. It sounds like radio static. “Pardon?” he asks. 

“Let me see them,” Will says in a woman’s voice, crackly and loud. Hannibal blinks and Will disappears. 

He finds himself on his back on the ground. The lights have come back on and it takes him a moment to adjust. The thumping returns. 

“Let me see your hands.” The voice over the intercom says, and it sounds like Alana’s. 

He wonders if this has all been a terrible dream, but the soreness he feels when he lifts his hands toward the ceiling tells him it hasn’t. 

He turns onto his side when he hears heavy boots coming down the hallway, and then a single gunshot that hurts his head sounds. He can’t remember if there had been more before that. He hears the code being typed into the keypad and the door swings open. Alana walks in with a team of three state troopers. 

As the door closes, he catches a glimpse of a mangled, gutted man splayed out on the ground. He wears a guard’s uniform. 

“You have murdered my companion,” Hannibal says mournfully from his place on the ground. 

“He was already dead,” Alana states flatly, crossing her arms. She nods to the men around her, and they open the glass door leading to his part of the room. Ordinarily, this would have been made into a whole ritual, but she must know that he isn’t going to put up a fight. 

One of the men lifts Hannibal to a sitting position while another handcuffs him. The third gets out a water bottle from his backpack and twists it open. Hannibal drinks the entire thing wordlessly. When he finishes, her phrase comes back to him. 

“Dead in what way? Psychologically or neurologically?” 

She walks closer to the glass, but still keeps a distance out of habit. “Physiologically,” she says. 

Hannibal lets out a raspy laugh as a soft cereal bar is shoved at his face. “Are the dead walking and talking now? Have I hallucinated into the apocalypse?” he asks before taking a bite. 

“You would only make a joke out of it if I told you that you did.” 

“Then, tell me more than that. What happened in the complex?”

“Five days ago, something began spreading, nobody knew what it was, but it was infecting people left and right. Four days ago, a hoard of Rained broke into the complex.”

“‘Rained’. That is what you are calling these infected people.”

“In common circles, yes. Anyone who could give them an official name is either one of them or doesn’t have a clue. And they aren’t people, Hannibal.” 

“Certainly seems so, given the way you executed that man,” Hannibal comments, and Alana stares at him blankly. “I pass no judgment, Dr. Bloom. I was actually more fond of him in death than in life.”

“Almost starved to death and you still find it in yourself to be amused.”

“Always. There is never a bad time for a funny joke.” He takes another bite of the bar when it’s offered to him. 

“Yes, except your gauge for what’s funny seems to be horribly broken.” 

“I miss your sense of humor, Alana.”

“I’m afraid it got knocked out of me when I fell out of your window,” she deadpans. 

Hannibal only smiles. That’s a shame. 

“You’re being transferred to a secure facility in D.C. You’ll continue serving your sentences there.” As if on cue, a fourth trooper enters with a straight jacket, muzzle, and cart. 

“The apocalypse is upon us and the prison system prevails,” he laments as the men drag him to his feet. “Both unfortunately expected and disappointing.” 

“For you, yes.”

Hannibal’s head spins as they tie him up tight and strap him to the cart. As they wheel him out of the room, he glances at the guard laying on the floor. His skin has peeled back in several places and he’s been gutted. He remembers hearing the organs fall out as he stood on that first day. 

When he turns his head, he sees five more bodies strewn out down the hallway, all with bullet holes in their skulls. The stench is horrid. 

“Your vanity paid off,” Alana says as she walks alongside his cart. “You’re the only surviving prisoner.” She purses her lips when Hannibal flashes her a satisfied sideways glance.

They load him into a cage inside a transport van, and Alana climbs into the back with him, accompanied by two of the troopers. The other two climb into the front. 

As they drive, Hannibal tries to observe the scene outside through the netted and tinted windows. The streets of Baltimore are deserted, storefronts smashed. Rained roam the streets aimlessly and take after their truck when they hear it. The troopers run past them and over them without regard. 

When they hit the smaller roads, Hannibal can see no more of them, but feels them under their tires like speed bumps, more and more often as they go on. They must have killed them on their way to the BSHCI. 

“There’s too many,” Hannibal hears a trooper up front say to the one driving. “There’s no way we’ll make it over.” 

“You should have thought of that when you were shooting them left and right!” the one beside Alana calls. 

“Don’t be dumb,” says the driver and presses on, only for the tires to lift off the road and sputter as they lose traction. 

“Dumbass,” the first trooper breathes. 

“Well, what are you waiting for? Get out, clear them,” the dumbass commands, irritated. 

“That goes for you, too,” says the fourth, across from Hannibal. 

“Yes! Everyone!” The driver unlocks the door, getting out with a grunt, followed by the passenger. The two in the back open the double doors, throwing down their heavy weapons and crossing to the front of the van to join the rest of the team. Hannibal can hear them fighting amongst each other as they drag the bodies out from under the wheels. 

Alana puts her head in her hands, sinking away into thought. Hannibal wants to ask her where her family is. 

After a few minutes, he hears a whisper from behind them in the woods. “Lap, twine mug…” and then another whisper, a different voice. “Wrath kern highness…” 

The troopers seem too wrapped up in their quarrel to hear them, and Alana seems too far away. Hannibal tries to say her name, not particularly in the mood to be mauled, but it comes out only as a weak hum inside his mask. 

The whispers stack until, altogether, the hoard screeches their infamous, “Rain!”

Alana lifts her head sharply, peering out the window and sitting back down in horror. One of the troopers yells in agony as the others curse. One fires his gun and Hannibal hears the others start to move the bodies faster, but only until another of the group is overtaken.

The two that are left run to the back of the van, and the one that was sitting next to Alana grabs his gun. As he draws out of the salon, he looks them both in the eyes and says, “Good luck.” 

“Wait!” Alana yells, but he slams the doors shut and locks them just as the Rained charge against the van’s side, rocking it. Hannibal sees their faces in the window behind him when he twists around. Their eyes resemble those of dying animals’.

Shots go off one after another, but to no avail. More and more Rained file out of the forest and the truck starts to tip to the left. “Faster!” the trooper yells to the one moving bodies, but his answer is only a scream. As the gunshots trail off down the road, some of the Rained start to follow them, leaving the van. As its right side crashes back onto the road, Hannibal’s head bangs against the window behind him painfully, and he starts to feel dizzy. 

His vision goes to spots as he sees Alana pick up the gun the troopers left behind. She gives Hannibal a hard look before busting open the back doors and pushing herself out. 

\---

The world comes slowly back to Hannibal. His head is throbbing once again and the van smells faintly of blood. Night had fallen in the short time he was out and the headlights now reveal the road ahead. Alana is driving. 

When he turns his head to look at her, he is surprised to not feel his mask. 

“Don’t try anything,” she says sternly. The carefully arranged twists of her hair have come undone and she now sports a small gash on her chin. 

“I made no plans to.” He sits back in his seat to demonstrate his point. “Is this a display of trust on your part?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You haven’t had anything to eat or drink in close to a week and you just smashed your head on metal.”

“Hardly a deterrent,” Hannibal says lightly. “As you may recall, I had once promised to kill you.”

“I don’t understand. Are you trying to get restrained again?”

“Not at all. I am simply stating that my potential will is stronger than my injuries.”

“Well, you often overestimate yourself.”

“Often not.” 

She knows it’s true, so she doesn’t answer. Just then, the van lets out a long beep. “You’re kidding,” Alana scowls, slapping the wheel. “They couldn’t fill up before we left?” 

“Trouble in paradise?” Hannibal asks, and Alana shoots him a silencing glare. 

The car comes to a halt and, frustrated, Alana starts to gather up their things. She takes his straight jacket, mask, and more discreetly, the gun. “Get out,” she orders. “Let’s go.” 

Hannibal obeys without protest and meets her in front of the van. Their breath smokes in the cold, illuminated by the headlights before they shut off on their own as the van dies. In mutual understanding, they begin to walk along the road, Alana limping and Hannibal struggling not to slouch in his weakened state. 

“Are we far from our destination?” Hannibal asks, only for Alana to let out a huff, annoyed at hearing his voice again. 

“About 30 miles.” 

“You could have left me to the Rained, saved yourself a trip. The Hospital was but a 15-minute drive back.”

“I don’t want you to die, Hannibal. I don’t only think about myself, and I don’t have your penchant for cruelty.” She looks up at Hannibal to see him looking up at the sky. He looks just as cool as always, in both senses of the word. It’s irritating and amazing at the same time, which makes it even more irritating. 

“Yet you were willing to sell me into torture and death, if I recall correctly,” he notes. 

She draws her eyes away from him, instead, keeping them on the yellow lines stretching under her boots. “I was angry. I wanted you punished for what you did to Will, to me.”

“You’re not angry anymore, then.”

“Anxious more than anything,” she admits. “You scarred me, Hannibal, but I can’t spend my time picking at old scabs anymore.”

“Some say having a family changes things.” 

Definitely did for Will, she thinks. 

Hannibal continues, finally looking toward her. “How is your family, Alana? Did they survive?” 

“Yes, Hannibal, they’re in a secure location,” she says quickly, not wanting to bring them into the conversation. 

“I’m glad to hear it,” he tells her, nodding. 

“You’re not.”

“Oh, but I am, Alana. Family is a vital concept.” He slides his hand over where he knows his drawing is, feeling its crinkle. 

“Your concept of family is nothing more than narcissistic adoration.” She tries to gauge his reaction and meets his eyes. They look black in the moonlight. 

“Are you diagnosing me, Dr. Bloom? Because I would beg to differ.”

“I think the general consensus is that you’re beyond diagnosis.” She hates to admit it because she knows it will only stroke his ego, knowing that people pore over their notes on him, place his darkness as beyond human. 

They walk in silence for close to twenty minutes before Hannibal points to a gentle glow off to their left. Alana pulls her gun as they veer towards it, down a short drive. 

As they come closer, a tall, black gate comes into view with even taller concrete walls to either side of it. The two lanterns they saw from the road sit mounted on Corinthian columns. Through the slots between bars, they can see a neat neighborhood, untouched by chaos. Extravagant houses sit to either side of the empty street. 

Alana notices a call button on one of the columns and, eyeing Hannibal, who urges her on, she presses it. “Hello? Hello, we need help.”

The intercom crackles for a few seconds with no answer, and then it stops, the only sounds remaining those of the woods around them. Discouraged, she turns back toward Hannibal, and then, behind her: “Wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 3 and 4 will be posted Monday, 1/25!


	3. Chapter 3

When they fled the house, the day had been broaching dusk. The hour they spend in the car lightens the sky, mixing its pink with an early shade of blue. 

As Will drives down the road, long and straight, it’s almost too easy to imagine that he’s going to work at the marina or taking Wally to school. Only the abandoned cars dotting the sides of the road disrupt the illusion. 

Sometime after Will had locked the doors, Wally had stopped kicking at them and yelling in attempt to go back for his mom, instead, falling completely silent. However, Will doesn’t remember when exactly. 

Half an hour into their drive, Will realized he had set out with no destination, but now finds himself approaching Baltimore, taking the turns that would lead him to Hannibal’s office. He had taken them amidst crisis, encephalitis-ridden. He can make it there blind. The office is the only place that feels close to him in the moment. 

Once the buildings start to rise around him, he pulls into a Sunoco. 

It’s better to fill up now, rather than later, he thinks, but as he pops the tank, he realizes he doesn’t have anything except for his gun and keys. 

He looks toward the empty, smashed-up store across the lot and wonders if any money has been left in the register. Unlikely, but possible. 

He turns back to face Wally, who looks up at him with a bitter betrayal, one that morphs into fiery resentment within seconds. The look in his eyes alone chews Will up and spits him out. 

Nonetheless, he tries to ignore it as he tells him they need to go. 

“I’m staying in the car,” Wally says stubbornly. 

Will unlocks the doors. “I’m not going to leave you here.” 

“You left mom,” he says. “Leave me.” His voice quivers on the last few words, but he doesn’t cry. His arms stay crossed, and he stays firmly planted in his seat. 

Will unbuckles and crawls through the car into the back, settling down next to him. He has never been good at comforting anyone in any genuine way, and he tries to think of what Molly would do. He tries to pull Wally to him, but he only thrashes against his hold. 

“Leave me alone, Will!” he shouts. “Get away from me!” 

Will flinches at the sound of his name in Wally’s mouth. It sounds foreign and cold and digs at him. 

They sit in silence for a moment, Wally looking fiercely out the window, and Will staring at the seat in front of him, arms between his legs, looking just as much like a child as his son. 

“Please, Wally,” he offers. “Let’s go. I don’t want you to die out here.” A full minute goes by before he receives an answer. 

“Dad made me promise I would protect her,” Wally says through his teeth. “I promised.” 

As Will looks at him now, he sees this broken promise sitting atop Wally’s shoulders, hunching them. 

Even though he doesn’t say it, he knows that in the moment, Wally thinks dying seems appealing, that the magnitude of the failure he perceives as his own is too much to bear. 

The boy steels his expression further, shoves his door open, and gets out. 

Will keeps him pressed against his side, even as Wally struggles against him, as they move between the rows of pumps. With his other hand, he holds his gun and points it out in front of him as they enter the small store. Glass and cheap Christmas decorations crunch under their feet as they make their way toward the cash register. 

“Stay here,” he instructs as he pushes Wally behind the counter and goes to check between the aisles for danger. 

Most of the shelves have been looted, leaving only the odd lighter or Carmex tube laying around. 

Suddenly, as he rounds a corner, there comes a blow to his back. He stumbles forward and someone else yanks the gun from his hand. 

“Stop!” Wally shouts from the front of the store. Will tries to turn around, but he’s only shoved to his knees in the middle of the aisle. A tall, muscular man drags Wally in by the hair at the other end to face him. 

“Give us the keys to the car and nobody dies,” a woman hisses from behind Will. He tries to turn his head to look at her, but she only cocks the gun she took from him, pressing it to his neck. Its icy barrel pleads for action. 

He runs through his options quickly. 

Without the car, they’re stranded, but he can’t possibly overpower the two of them. A stale type of violence starts to rise in his chest, distant, but familiar. 

The man behind Wally takes a switchblade out of his pocket, flicking it open, and brings it dangerously close to Wally’s throat. Images of Abigail flash through Will’s mind.

If he’s fast enough, he can strip the woman of the gun and take out her partner. Then he would—

“The fucking keys!” the woman shouts, jerking him. “Or the kid is done, on God, he’s done!” 

The blade presses against the pale skin of Wally’s neck, beading red at its tip. “No,” Wally chokes out. “Please.” His eyes shake and shift with fear, as do his legs. He draws quick, uneven breaths as he silently pleads with Will. 

He realizes Wally thinks there’s a chance that Will will let them kill him. 

He isn’t Abigail, and Will can’t kill in front of him, not when he’s already so disillusioned with him. 

“Alright,” he says, blinking. Slowly, he reaches into his pocket and fishes out his keys. The hand behind him snatches them, and its owner is gone before he can even turn around. The man holding Wally shoves him toward Will before disappearing behind the woman. 

He hears the car speed away as Wally comes into his arms, clutching at his sweater and shaking. 

“You’re alright, it’s okay,” Will assures, petting Wally’s hair. “We’re here.” Wally nods jerkily into his shoulder, and they sit together for a few minutes. He lets Wally decide when to pull away. 

When Will looks into his eyes, he finds a new fear and hardness that wasn’t there before. 

He knows that he can remedy Wally’s fear, but the hardness is a stubborn thing and is there to stay. 

\---

“Keep close,” Will says as they cross the wide street. There is no one in sight, dead or alive, but they are now completely unarmed and vulnerable. 

Will had spied a plaza on their way into the gas station, and maybe, just maybe, there is a store there that hasn’t been smashed. 

They walk quickly and quietly through the parking lot, keeping to open spaces and away from the narrow passes between cars. 

Almost all the vehicles have smashed windows, either one or all six of them. Flies parade in and out of the cracks, feasting on torn limbs and guts and dripping blood. The victims are no longer inside, seemingly determined to find new prey no matter how torn up the evidence suggests their bodies are. 

It seems surreal to Will, like this can’t be their world. Will has never particularly struggled against any truth presented by evidence unless it related to Hannibal, but even as the evidence lays in front of him, red and rotting, what he sees seems impossible. 

The thought to hotwire one of the empty cars comes and passes. Where would they go? Hannibal’s office? Then what? In addition to those questions, he can’t imagine having to drive, let alone put Wally in a car slick and sticky with blood. 

Will looks around the plaza until he spots the doors to a Whole Foods, surprisingly untouched. He supposes no one cares for organic produce during the apocalypse. 

As they approach, he sees that the reason there hasn’t been a break-in is the thick metal bars on the other side of the glass. 

Will’s eyes search the ground around them, landing on a rusty paperclip in the shadow of a trash can and a stray bobby pin a bit further off. He picks them both up and walks back toward the doors. 

He looks at Wally standing behind him and waves him over, saying, “I want you to see this.” Wally comes closer to crouch next to Will as he inserts the bobby pin into the door and bends it to form a sharp angle, a lever. “This’ll be useful, so pay attention,” he says. 

Will straightens the paper clip, leaving a small hook on the end, and slides it in beside the bobby pin. “There are five small pins inside a lock,” he explains, “and you need to push all of them up for it to open. Here, touch.” He takes Wally’s hand and replaces his own with it on the paper clip. “Feel how that pin is harder to push up than the others?” Wally nods. “That one needs to be pushed up first.” He takes the paper clip once more and hears a small click. “After that, another one will tighten.” He repeats the action of pressing up with the remaining four before the ordinarily automatic doors unlock, sliding open incrementally. Will pushes them open wider and takes out the pin and clip, handing them to Wally. “Your turn,” he says, gesturing to the bars. “I’ll keep watch.”

Wally crouches before the lock with a determined expression, his thin fingers working the bobby pin into the keyhole, followed by the clip. 

Will looks out at the lot while he waits and sees movement in one of the cars closest to them. A creature that was once a woman writhes in the driver’s seat, reaching for the window. She has spotted them and started muttering to herself. A teenage boy sits in the seat next to her, bloody and muttering as well, but strapped down by his seatbelt. 

The woman grips the window frame with her peeling fingers, glass shards piercing them at odd angles, and pulls herself upwards and out of it. Her torso, connected to her lower half only by her small intestine, slaps onto the concrete. Wally twists at the sound, fingers fumbling. 

“It’s okay,” Will says, placing a hand on his head, “take your time.” Wally resumes and Will hears the first tiny click of five. 

The woman begins to crawl toward them slowly, leaving a slick trail of blood in her wake. At a point, her intestine stops following her. Will hears two more clicks in quick succession. 

“Rain. Rain,” he hears fall from the woman’s mouth. The word is garbled and weak, but strangely piercing. It holds something within it that he can’t quite place. 

Wally pushes up the fourth pin and finally, the lock on the bars falls away with the fifth. 

“Great job,” Will says, smiling down at his son and turning away from the woman. He pushes open the gates as they step inside the store. The lights are off, but the sunlight coming in at the front allows them to see that the store has truly been left untouched. 

Will turns back toward the sliding doors, twisting the interior lock on them closed, but unsure of how to secure the bars again. The torso outside remains far away but inching closer. 

“Would you like the key?” a gentle voice from behind them asks. Will spins around, instinctively yanking Wally toward him. A brown-haired, twenty-something woman walks tentatively out of the shadow of an aisle. Will peers around her to see if anyone else emerges, but sees no one. She stops a few feet from them and holds out a lanyard with a set of keys. “Please.” 

Wordlessly, keeping Wally behind him, Will takes them and locks the bars. 

“You’ve, uh, picked a good place to stay,” she continues. She’s nervous, needs to fill the silence, Will notes. “No one’s come besides you.”

“You’re alone, then,” he confirms, turning back toward her. She hesitates.

“Kind of. My boyfriend is in the back.” 

Will watches her shift and eventually nods. 

“Do you work here, Avery?” he asks as they walk further into the store. 

“What? How did you— Oh. Nametag,” she laughs airily. “I did, yeah. Past tense, now, I guess.” They walk past stocked shelves of granola and bread and water. “I was finishing locking up when everything went down. It happened so fast.”

To Will, in retrospect, the attack seems like it happened in slow motion and to someone else. Perhaps, to a character in a movie he watched. 

They approach the back of the store, which houses the hot bar, prepared foods, and bakery. Avery leads them past the counter into the kitchen. They cross it to stand by a large walk-in freezer. “My boyfriend,” she says, gesturing inside and shoving her hands into her pockets. 

“Grain, blanket green,” comes from behind the door. 

“I’m sorry,” Will tells her after a moment. She shrugs and turns away. He peers through the small window and sees a slender creature standing with his back to the door. He is peeling, but not visibly damaged in any other way. “Hey,” he says to Wally, “go pick something out to eat. There’s no one here.” Wally hesitates at first, but leaves. 

Will turns to Avery, who wipes her eyes before looking up. “Did you lose anyone like that?” she asks him. 

“My wife, actually, his mother,” he tells her, but it doesn’t wet his eyes. He hasn’t had the chance to really think about her yet, only in passing. In fact, in the car, he thought more about the dogs than her. Now that her death truly dawns on him, he finds it doesn’t phase him as it should. “It was a bloodbath.” 

“Yeah, Erik got away with one bite, but it was enough.” She walks over to the window in time for Erik to turn around. 

“Rain!” he shouts and lunges for the door. Avery barely flinches, lifting her fingers over the glass to meet his pounding fist. 

“Does it— he— recognize you?” Will asks. 

“As much as he recognizes you. We’re all just targets to him.” She leans back against the door, feeling the dull thumps of his body against her spine. “He forgot who I was a few minutes after he got bit. He was picking me up, and this peeling man came out of nowhere and attacked him. I dragged him inside the store and locked the doors.”

“How long did it take for him to change?” 

“Ten minutes, maybe? It gave me a chance to see what was going on outside. A hundred of them just swarmed the lot, started mauling people who were just walking, busting through car windows before they could get away. People who were hurt more changed faster. Especially if they were dead.  
“His speech went next; he sounded crazy. By the time his eyes started to change, I forced him into the freezer.” 

“Isn’t there a handle on the inside?”

“There is, but he doesn’t seem to remember how one works.”

Will looks past her, nods. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says and walks out of the kitchen before she has a chance to return the sentiment. He would feel disingenuous receiving it. 

As he reaches the counter, Wally comes bounding up to him. “Can I have this?” he asks. He shows him a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. 

“Yeah,” Will says, “of course.” 

“Thanks, Dad.”

\---

The rest of the night is spent on recharging. Wally sits in the freezer aisle, eating ice cream and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, while Will picks out something for them to change into from the limited clothing section. He also grabs a few blankets for them to lay down on later. 

Even when all the sunlight is gone and the store is consumed by darkness, they do not turn on the lights. She says that it’s what doomed some of the other stores in the plaza, that any sign of life is enough motive for the creatures.

Will leads Wally away from the cold and into the snack aisle to turn in for the night. 

He tucks into Will’s side, and through their layers of clothes and blankets, Will can feel the remnants of anger dancing about Wally’s form. Mostly, however, he just senses his sadness. It’s perched and aching in his chest, laying low in the spaces between his ribs, the insides of his lungs. As he breathes, it spills out but goes right back in as he inhales. It doesn’t let him go, and Wally, in turn, holds onto it. 

The air conditioning unit hums above them, creating an even plane for Will’s tired mind to fall back on. 

The night before had felt like a clear divide, one between the past and the future. He had hoped his wedding day would feel like that or the day that he met Wally, but they didn’t. Not even in retrospect. 

Only one other day had fallen so heavily around him that he knew, even then, that he could never go back. 

The day he met Hannibal, the second he laid eyes on him, Will was jerked into the present and had lived in it ever since. It’s as if at that moment, whatever happened in the past started to disintegrate and erode, sub rosa, until he wanted to look back and all he saw was a drop into nothingness. 

Hannibal made it so there was only room for the fleeting moment of the present, and then forward movement. Even cast away, he followed Will through the divides he tried to create, like an apparition passing through walls, whispering in his ear, often looking after him in that doting, looming way of his. 

At first, his presence was unwelcome, but then it became needed as time went on and his day-to-day got duller and duller. 

_“How do you feel, Will?” he hears as the A/C fades away._

_They are back in his office, by the fire now. Will can’t remember what Hannibal had on his mantle. “How do_ you _feel, Dr. Lecter?”_

_Hannibal offers him a small smile as he leans back on his desk. It fades soon after. “There’s something you would like to tell me.”_

Yes, he wants to tell him about how he doesn’t miss Molly, but even inside his own head, he’s afraid to admit it. Or, perhaps, he’s afraid of Hannibal’s reaction, which he knows will be positively delighted when he, himself, feels guilty. Guilty in front of Wally. So, he says something else:

_“The creatures, they won’t let me go.”_

_“Oh?” He makes Hannibal go along with the new topic, though he knows he wouldn’t in real life._

_“They have something for me to understand. I can tell.”_

_“Do they? Or perhaps, you are struggling to find reason amidst the chaos that surrounds you.”_

_“There has to be a reason. If not for everything that’s happened, then just for the reason they act the way they do.” Will looks to him for feedback, but only gets a blank stare, a reflection of his own mind._

At once, he is coldly reminded that none of this construction is real, that Hannibal can only regurgitate Will’s own thoughts, move only in the way Will assigns. A sense of wild unfulfillment washes over him as the A/C comes back and wipes away the crackling of the fireplace. The floor seems harder now, even covered by layers of blankets. 

The thought that Hannibal might be dead visits him. He imagines him torn apart in his cell, his blood spilled across the stone floor, unceremoniously reflecting the fluorescents above. Hannibal’s eyes turn yellow, then red, and then he rises having forgotten all he spent his life becoming and Will. 

Heaviness sets in, caving Will's chest and constricting his lungs. He can’t be dead. Please, don’t be dead.


	4. Chapter 4

“Wait.” 

The man’s voice strikes Alana in the back as she watches Hannibal raise his brows. They stand by the looming gates as they hear two sets of footsteps approaching, a third still far away. 

The first pair lands heavily and belongs to the silhouette of a round man, who is leading the way with a flashlight. Behind him is a woman, whose brightest feature in the night is her white hair.

The flashlight hits them in the face as the man holding it asks, “Who are you?” His voice matches the one from the intercom, and it doesn’t sound any less cracked in person, fried from smoking. 

Alana and Hannibal barely need to exchange a glance before she steps forward. “My name is Dr. Alana Bloom. Our van ran out of gas half an hour up the road,” she explains. 

The third set of footsteps, quick and light, finishes its journey at the gate. The lanterns’ light bounces off the young man’s glasses as he catches his breath and peers at the newcomers. 

“That’s great and all, Alana, but why is this one in a jumpsuit?” the round man continues. 

Hannibal grins. “A costume party.” 

Ignoring him, Alana begins, “We were coming from—”

“Hey,” the spectacled man interrupts, “aren’t you Hannibal Lecter?”

“Doctor, yes,” Hannibal corrects. 

Alana looks defeated. 

“Do you know him, Stephen?” the woman questions. 

“Yeah, of course, Ma, he was all over the news two years ago. Still even. I read all about him— I read all about you, Dr. Lecter,” he says quickly, turning toward the gate. Hannibal rewards him with a flattered nod.

“Why was he in the news if you’re such an expert?” the round man asks. 

“Well, he…” Stephen glances off to the side, not wanting to tell them.

“What did he do, Stephen?” his mother asks, eyeing Hannibal standing calmly with his hands locked in front of him. 

“He just— It’s not that he— I mean…”

“I was unfortunately charged with murder and cannibalism,” Hannibal takes over, “but I can assure you it was just a phase.” 

“Murder and cannibalism?” the woman gasps. 

“Your honesty has impeccable timing,” Alana seethes. 

“Stephen, I thought I told you to stop reading that serial killer stuff.”

“I’m 25, Ma, I can read whatever I want.” 

“We can’t let him in, Tom,” she announces, turning to the man next to her. 

“Mabel, I know. Y’all better find somewhere else to go,” he tells them. 

“No,” Alana protests. “We’ll die out here if you don’t let us in. Please.”

“He is a murderous cannibal.” Tom runs the flashlight up and down Hannibal’s jumpsuit. “How is he any different from the Rained?” 

Alana opens her mouth but closes it again. 

“We have children, injured people in here,” Tom continues, and this catches Hannibal’s attention. “We have enough to worry about as it is. Now, go away.”

“Do you have a doctor? A medical doctor to care for your injured?” Hannibal asks. 

Tom pauses and looks at Mabel before asking, “Why? One of you a doctor?”

“He was top of his class at Johns Hopkins,” Stephen informs before shutting up when his mother glares at him. 

“So, you can do surgeries and stuff like that,” Tom confirms, and Hannibal can practically hear the gears shift. 

“Yes, I worked as an E.R. surgeon for many years.” 

The group is silent for a few long moments. “We’ll let you in on two conditions,” Tom says slowly. “One: we have a girl. Her leg was hurt in an accident. You take a look at her, and two: you move on tomorrow morning. We’ll give you a car, but you leave.”

“Yes,” Alana agrees before Hannibal can say anything else. “He’ll do it. We’ll leave.” 

“Okay, then,” Mabel says, but when Tom goes to open the gate, she adds, “but put those on him.” She points to the straight jacket and muzzle in Alana’s hands. 

\---

They parade Hannibal, restrained and shining in his whites, through the neighborhood. It’s well-to-do and small, consisting of a single street with a cul-de-sac at its top. Sparse street lamps illuminate neatly groomed lawns and shaped bushes. The few people on the sidewalks gaze at the group curiously, and a few pop out of their houses just to look. 

In the light, Hannibal can better observe the people leading him as well. An unkempt, gray mustache adorns Tom’s face, and when he takes his baseball cap off, he reveals a head of thin, white hair. In his flannel, which barely covers the hump of his beer belly, he looks out of place next to Mabel, who is wearing a pricey blouse and salad-green skirt. Her son, gangly and boyish, looks about five years younger than he is, and even more so when he pushes up his thick spectacles. 

Now that Hannibal is on their side of the gate, Stephen seems to put a few extra feet between them. He may have strange interests, but he isn’t stupid. 

“In here.” Tom steers them toward a large, dark house on the right side of the street. On the front stoop, he fishes around in his pockets, taking out and trying several keys before finding the correct one. “Lots of the neighbors left for the holidays. You can stay here tonight.” The door opens with a swish, welcoming them into the vast entry. 

“Shouldn’t we chain him or something?” Mabel asks, rubbing a wrinkly hand on her neck. Unable to respond, Hannibal looks to Alana. The others follow suit. 

“I don’t think it’s necessary. He can behave for one night. I’ll make sure of it.” It sounds like they’re checking into a no-pet motel with a rowdy mutt. 

“Right, then,” Tom concedes. “We’ll be back around to get you in a few minutes after we tell the Shores’ you’re coming.” Tom and Mabel file out, but Stephen stays back for just a second. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Lecter,” he says, almost giddy, before slipping out the door as well and shutting it. 

Alana turns to him once they’re alone, giving him a huff of a laugh when he tries to gesture for her to release him from his jacket and mask. “For the sake of my nerves, no.” She flips on the lights in the entry and goes into the living room. 

\---

The Shores’ are nervous opening the door to Hannibal and his escorts. Mr. Shores, standing in front of Mrs. Shores, stares too long at Hannibal’s crossed arms as he comes inside. He is covered in scabbing cuts and scrapes that Hannibal assumes are from his car accident. 

“Elisabeth is upstairs,” his wife says in a small voice, barely audibly. She leads the parade of people up their stairs and into the master bedroom, where Elisabeth, pale, almost gray, lays with her eyes trained on the ceiling. 

Hannibal doesn’t have to come close to see the discoloration of her leg, but as he does, the severity of it becomes apparent and suggests something ominous. 

The group gives him space as he leans over the leg to inspect it. Elisabeth’s left calf has ballooned to twice the size of her right, and it doesn’t take an x-ray machine to identify the fracture. The bone visibly pushes up against her skin, threatening to puncture it even through the swelling. The swelling itself could, of course, be a result of the break, but there is only one way to find out. 

This time, when Hannibal looks to Alana to take off his mask, she does. “The jacket as well, if you would.” Reluctantly, she unfastens the clips in the back. “Mr. Shores,” Hannibal says, and the man steps forward stiffly. 

“Yes? Is she going to be okay?” His voice shakes on the question. 

“Was your daughter's leg crushed in the accident? Perhaps, it was caught between two objects or stuck under a piece of metal.” Hannibal steps toward the bed once more to assess the fracture, this time free. Gently, he feels around her calf. 

“Yes, it was. I needed help pulling it from underneath the wreckage. Thankfully, Tom was there to help us out. What does that mean?” He pulls his wife close as she comes to stand next to him. 

Hannibal looks up at the couple, huddled and scared. “I suspect Acute Compartment Syndrome,” he tells them. “More commonly known as Crush Syndrome. It is a result of blocked blood flow. I am afraid it’s serious.” 

“How serious?” Mrs. Shores presses. 

Hannibal turns his head to Elizabeth, who seems not to notice him. “Elizabeth,” he says, voice clear so as to reach her. She blinks in response. “I will need you to tell me if you can feel the pressure I am placing on your leg.” She slowly shakes her head. “And here?” He moves up to her swollen knee and she nods. 

“A little,” she says weakly. 

“Good, that is all,” he tells her before addressing her parents. “Has she been complaining of general sickness?”

Mrs. Shores nods. “Yes, she has a fever that comes and goes, chills, nausea.”

“Necrosis has unfortunately set in,” Hannibal says after a moment. “The tissue in her leg is dying and causing her to be ill. I must recommend prompt amputation,” he says, unblinking, and watches as Mr. Shores looks away and Mrs. Shores clamps a hand over her mouth. 

“You can’t be serious,” Mr. Shores says. “She’s only twelve.” 

Hannibal stays silent for a moment as an acute and familiar sense of opportunity washes over him. He feels Alana eyeing him in his peripheral, and Tom even more intently. “I am afraid it needs to be done; however, I cannot do it today without the proper tools.”

“We can get supplies tomorrow,” Mabel says. “Tell us what you need and we’ll bring it.”

“And you’re absolutely sure this is what she needs? What about after the surgery?” Mrs. Shores asks. 

Excellent question, Hannibal thinks. “After the surgery, she will need intensive and specific care.” 

“And will you give it to her?” she continues. 

Hannibal resists the urge to crack a self-satisfied grin. Sometimes life feels like acting out a script he wrote. 

“I am afraid that violates my agreement with Tom. I am scheduled to depart tomorrow.” He looks at the man standing behind the Shores’ and challenges his knowing glare. 

“Please, Tom,” Mr. Shores says, “you saved Elisabeth once, don’t let her die. Let him help our daughter.”

“He’s a public menace,” Tom says, gesturing to him. “A cannibal.”

 _Rude to name-call, Tom_. Hannibal makes a mental note. 

“He’s the only doctor here,” Mr. Shores argues. “The two that lived here are both out of town. He’s Elisabeth’s only chance, menace or not.” 

“Please, Dr. Lecter, stay,” Mrs. Shores says, approaching him as if she’s forgotten who he is. “Just please help her. Tom—”

“Do what you want,” Tom says gruffly, “but don’t forget who saved you and your daughter, who drove you home, and who’s had this place in check for the past five days.” 

Hannibal doesn’t look away from him, easily meeting Tom’s raging eyes with his cool ones, now with the knowledge that they are both strangers here. 

When Tom walks out in a huff, Mabel trailing him, he turns his attention back to Elisabeth. 

“If you wish, I can treat her other wounds, for now, to prevent infection,” he offers. Putting up a generous and kind facade after such an outburst from Tom could hardly hurt him. 

They nod. “Please,” Mr. Shores says. “What can we get you?” 

Hannibal lists a few first aid products among other things, and when they leave to retrieve them, a voice pipes up from beside Alana. 

“Is there anything I can do, Dr. Lecter?” Stephen. Hannibal continues to inspect his patient’s wounds. 

“If you so wish, you could bring a glass of water for me and Dr. Bloom,” Hannibal tells him.

“Woah, Dr. Bloom?” he says to Alana. “You got pushed out of his window when he fled for Europe. I read about you, too.” 

Alana, a bit disturbed, nods. “The water.” 

“Yes, of course,” Stephen remembers and rushes away, pushing past the Shores’ coming back into the room. 

They agree that the next day will be spent preparing a space and Elisabeth for the surgery, and that the amputation would take place the day afterward. 

Hannibal spends the next hour disinfecting cuts and scrapes and suturing wider gashes with a sewing needle. The motions come naturally to him, even after his time in prison, and his mind begins to wander. When he wipes away her blood with a towel, he remembers how he once wiped Will’s knuckles, gently soaked his hands. He would flash Will grins and feel rewarded when they were returned. He wonders if there is any drawing paper in their new house. 

Alana sits in the room silently until Hannibal finishes and sits back in the desk chair the Shores’ provided him before they headed downstairs to wait. 

“Did you win yourself more time just to spite me or because this girl actually needs an amputation?” Alana asks from the other side of the bed. 

“The former, among other reasons, my own.” Hannibal wipes off the needle on the towel and moves on to cap the antiseptic. 

“Which would be?” she prompts. 

“Do you still plan on caging me in Washington?”

Alana smoothes her hand over the bedsheets, stopping at Elisabeth’s bad leg. “I was. I don’t know how I will now that you’re free. Telling the government you died and going back to my family would be easier.”

“Do that, then, if there is still a government to report to.” 

Alana laughs. “Don’t act like you didn’t know you were putting me in an impossible situation. These people won’t let me leave without taking you with me. They think you’ll go rabid without a keeper.” 

“I will prove to them otherwise. You know firsthand that I can be very amiable.” He looks up to see her expression relax at the statement. 

“When it serves you.”

“Pack survival serves me just as well,” he assures her, and she falls silent, staring now at the girl’s darkening calf. It has gone black in several places in growing, dying patches. 

“What were you thinking about before I spoke?” Alana asks him. 

“About her wounds,” he answers. 

“And honestly?”

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t appreciate the truth.” 

“Any truth from you is to be appreciated. No matter how glibly delivered.”

“I was thinking about Will,” he confesses, and for the first time avoids her eyes. 

Alana furrows her brows. “You’re worried about him.”

“In my own way, yes.” Hannibal feels his drawing, still trapped in his suit, burning a hole in his chest. 

“After all this time. It isn’t in your pathology to be hung up on someone for so long.” She tries to read his expression, but finds nothing she can latch onto except for the briefest flash of a frown. 

“I was in love with him,” Hannibal says offhandedly, wishing it would glide over Alana’s head or escape out the door unheard. 

She gives him a hard look. “You aren’t anymore, then?”

After a pause, he says, “I am. Very much so, but I didn’t think you would appreciate this either.” As soon as he says it, he wishes at once to take it back. The sentiment seems too private, too close to him, meant to be shut in between fabric and skin. 

“You’re right, I don’t, but it doesn’t matter anymore, does it.”

“No. I suppose it doesn’t.” 

It pains him, dully yet profoundly, to hear it said aloud, to admit he may never see his Will again. 

Later, when they return to their house, he ventures up to the third floor, to the master bedroom. There, he steps out of his jumpsuit, folding it, and placing it on the bed with the drawing on top. He rummages through the family’s drawers looking for something that pleases him and settles on a gray turtleneck and a pair of black sweatpants. He finds that the quality of their fabrics doesn’t disappoint him in the slightest. 

He opens the french doors at the side of the room, the front of the house, and steps out onto the balcony. The cold night air greets him, and the elegant metal railing meets his fingers. 

It only takes a second for him to know Will isn’t dead. Something in the breeze lets him know that. 

Perhaps, the scent of the woods surrounding the neighborhood or the way the house across from theirs is lit up. It reminds him of how Will once told him about his Wolf Trap home becoming a ship in the night. Like a rescue ship himself, Hannibal looks up and hopes for an S.O.S. signal to be sent by the stars. He would find Will, save him, keep him close. 

Or maybe, the wrathful God who did this would flood the earth and wash Will up to his balcony. Hannibal would steal him from the waves and bring him up over the rails to join him, and they would watch the world flood and humanity drown and choke, without a care. 

The doorbell rings beneath him and he hears Alana open the door. Words are exchanged before she calls for him. “It’s for you! Hannibal!” 

At the door, waits a woman with a small boy, eight or nine years of age. Her hand trembles as she offers it to him. He is gentle when he shakes, a small trick to put her at ease, and it works in part. “Dr. Lecter,” she starts. 

“Hannibal is sufficient, please.”

“Hannibal,” she corrects herself, “this is John. John, say ‘hi’.” The boy greets him and sneezes directly afterward. “He’s been sick for a few days. I was hoping you could take a look at him. I’m worried about all that’s going on, and I want to make sure it’s not serious.” 

“I see.” Hannibal looks past her to see a few neighbors observing the interaction from the street and peering through lit windows. The news of his arrival must have spread. “Please, come in. No reason to be out in the cold.” The woman hesitates before stepping inside, leading John by the hand. 

Hannibal finds evidence of nothing beyond a cold and escorts the pair out ten minutes later. The mother thanks him profusely and genuinely, introducing herself as Paige, and the neighbors spying seem intrigued, satisfied even, to see her leaving unharmed and more relaxed than when she came. 

Hannibal watches John skip across the street to the house that reminded him of a ship. 

When he returns upstairs, Alana is standing near the bed, looking over his drawing. She barely spares him a glance when he walks in. 

“Sap,” is all she says before folding up the drawing and telling him she’s taking the master bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 will be posted Monday, 2/1!


	5. Chapter 5

Will doesn’t flinch anymore when the creature in the walk-in charges against the door. In the four days he’s spent coming and going from the window, he’s learned to trust the door’s strength and rely on the creature's stupidity. 

On the second day, when he had woken up, he had heard the thumping, and with Wally still asleep, he was drawn to it. Avery was asleep on the floor nearby, and Will took the time to absorb the creature in front of him in detail for the first time, and almost to convince himself that it indeed exists in the same world as he. For the first time since Molly changed, he was able to see into one of their eyes as it bashed itself against the metal, went back a distance, and hurled towards him again. 

Each day, when he came back, he caught something new behind the filmy yellow, where he had expected to see nothing at all. On the first day, he saw torment and felt it in his own heart. The next day, a sliver of acrimony, hot and wild. Yesterday, it was despair, and today he identifies yearning. 

The conversations Will tries to have with Hannibal grow more and more unfulfilling as he makes new observations and seeks any kind of feedback on them. He doesn’t know how to piece his findings together, so neither does Hannibal in his mind. 

Furthermore, the words of the creature still make no sense to him, no matter how hard he tries to decipher them. The only consistent word he ever gets is ‘rain’. 

Wally spends his days wandering the store, opening boxes of snacks that he never finishes, and finding quiet places to sit alone. He engages in conversation when Will prompts it, but never by his own volition, so it’s a surprise to Will when, today, he pulls up a metal chair to the door and stands next to him, leveling their heights. 

With the boy, Will senses the arrival of a breakthrough, so he doesn’t tell him to look away from the creature, even as it yells louder at the new face in the window. Wally doesn’t flinch one bit when it hurls itself against the door. 

“Is that what happened to Mom?” he asks after four thumps. 

“Yes,” Will tells him. He looks over to see a tear slide down the boy’s cheek, the first since the day of the attack, as he continues to watch the creature. His lip quivers and slowly turns downward. 

“Okay,” he says, and suddenly leans against Will’s shoulder with his own, not willing to initiate the embrace, but asking for it. When Will wraps his arms around him, he practically collapses into his hold. “I’m sorry,” Wally squeaks out into his shoulder through tears as he begins to shake. 

“Nothing to apologize for,” Will says, holding him tighter. “Nobody is asking you to be strong.” Wally nods into his shoulder, though Will knows it'll be a while before he believes it. Wally draws away after a time, wiping his eyes, and frowns at Will. 

“Your beard.” He says, scrunching his face. Will runs his fingers along his jaw, realizing he hasn’t shaved since leaving home. 

He and Wally wander the hygiene aisle while Will tries to pick out something he likes, or maybe subconsciously, something that Hannibal would like, though he doubts Hannibal shopped at Whole Foods for his shaving needs. He settles on an organic shaving cream that he would ordinarily pass over as a waste of money. 

In the small bathroom, Will shaves unceremoniously while Wally, from his place on the counter, watches Will’s motions with reverence. When he’s done, the boy asks, “Can I try?”

Will raises his eyebrow at him as he rinses the razor. “You don’t have anything to shave, Bud.”

“I know, but like, my arm or something.” He sticks out his left and looks at Will, legs swinging, until he concedes. He watches as Will wets a small patch just above the knob of his wrist. 

“Does it hurt?” he asks. 

“No,” Will answers, “but it can.” He smoothes a dab of shaving cream over the patch and brings the razor closer before Wally stops him. 

“I wanna do it.” 

“Sure,” Will laughs, passing him the handle. “Against the grain,” he instructs. “Not too hard.” The tip of Wally’s tongue climbs out of his mouth as he concentrates. The razor makes shaky contact and clears a line of thin hairs as it travels. 

There is barely a difference to any other part of his arm when he lifts the blade, but Wally stares at his work as if admiring a new watch. 

“Thanks,” he says quietly. 

Just then, Avery pushes open the bathroom door with a frantic urgency. “Will, there’s people here. They’re going to break the windows. Where did you put the keys?” 

Will moves toward the door as he tries to remember. In the kitchen? Yes, in the kitchen. Wally hops off the counter and follows him through the store. Will grabs the keys from by the sink and moves briskly toward the doors. 

“Stay in the aisle,” he tells Wally as they get close. Will sees a group of two men and two women talking impatiently amongst themselves by the door. They have already disposed of the torso that has been clawing at the entrance for the past five days. 

The group watches Will carefully as he unlocks the bars, and when they enter, they display the same caution and distrust he did on the first day. 

“Where are you from?” Will asks them carefully. 

“We won’t be staying, don’t worry,” says one of the women. She doesn’t look like the authoritative type, and Will can tell she isn’t. He sees through her forced flatness and indifference; it coats her voice like an ill-fitting suit. 

Avery walks up behind Will. “Is there anything I can help you find?” she asks them. Will finds it funny how eagerly she falls back into her role, desperate for normalcy. 

“We’re just stocking up,” the woman says. “Go, split up,” she tells the others. The two men and the other woman disperse as their de facto leader stays with Will and Avery. 

“Where you're from, are there more people?” Will questions. “A community?”

“Of sorts,” she answers, glancing off to the side. “We’re small.” 

Will nods. She clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, but he knows they can’t stay in Whole Foods forever. Eventually, people will come who aren’t willing to wait outside for him to fetch the keys. 

“My name is Will,” he tells her, slapping on a smile and extending his arm. She shakes. 

“Mabel.”

“Do you have space in your community for a few more?” he asks. 

“We’re in a bit of a mess with a new arrival. It’s strained,” she explains. 

Will realizes he needs to play his cards wisely now. 

“Wally!” he calls, and the boy runs out to him. He grips his shoulders, bringing him forward. “Take him at least.” He feels Wally stiffen. “Just him,” he emphasizes. Wally twists from his hold, turning and grabbing Will’s arm at its elbow. 

“Where? I’m not going without you, Dad,” he says with emotion. A perfectly scripted response. 

Mabel looks down at Wally pitifully, bringing forth the empathy she’s tried to suppress, allowing herself to be affected by the hurt Will meant to elicit in Wally. “What do you do, Will?” she asks him finally. 

_I was an FBI profiler_ , he’s about to say, what he always says when he’s looking to impress, but stops himself. Something tells him value has shifted, and he opts for his more practical vocation. “I’m a motor engineer, but I can fix anything, really. I can be useful.” 

Mabel pauses and then looks at Wally clinging to Will’s arm again. “We’ll have space in our second car. You can come back with us if you’d like.” She flashes Wally a smile before turning to Avery. “And you? What do you do?”

“Oh,” she says. “Um, I think I’ll stay here, actually.” She gives Will a sideways glance. “My boyfriend and all.” 

Will nods in understanding, not particularly inclined to convince her. The three gathering groceries return to the front with full carts. 

\---

“Medical supplies,” Will notices as he and Wally climb into the back of a gray Prius. 

“Yeah,” the driver, the second of the women, says, “there’s a surgery tomorrow.” She shuts her door as quietly as possible and Will follows suit. 

“Where are we going?” Wally asks as he clicks his seatbelt in. 

Will puts his own on and says, “Someplace better,” as they pull out of the lot. 

Fifteen minutes later, a tall, black gate swings open for them as they enter a neighborhood. They stop at a small security booth, and a man who looks too large for it steps out. The woman rolls down the window and tells him about Will and Wally. The man sticks his balding head into the salon and greets them. 

“I’m Tom. Welcome.” And then, to the man sitting in the passenger’s seat: “Stephen, show them the sixth house on the left.” Stephen nods, taking the key that’s handed to him, and the window goes back up. 

They and the black Sedan that was following them stop in the same driveway, but when they get out, Stephen leads them back down the street. 

“You can stay here,” he says as he unlocks the front door of a house more extravagant than Will has ever stepped foot in. Besides Hannibal’s, perhaps. 

The floors, a bright marble, reflect the sunlight, making the entryway seem huge and Will seem tiny by comparison. He eyes himself in the mirror hung above a small console table. The family’s belongings— car keys, a few spare coins— still lay in a small braided dish on it. A once-vibrant house-plant wilts beside it. 

“This is okay?” Will asks Stephen. “They’re not coming back?”

“No one has yet,” Stephen shrugs as if it’s no big deal. It doesn’t feel that way to Will as he looks around, and his mind catalogs the clues that paint a picture of how the family once lived. He feels like he’s entering homes and gathering evidence again. It makes him feel faint after so long. 

Wally, on the other hand, marvels at the vastness of the house. “Woah!” he exclaims as he spots a massive flatscreen in an adjacent room. He runs towards it and out of sight. 

“Is that the house the surgery’s in?” Will asks, nodding in its direction in an attempt to distract himself. 

“Yeah,” Stephen says, pushing up his glasses. “It’s an amputation.” When Will raises his eyebrows, he says, “I know. Crazy doctor.”

Will pushes out a laugh. “I’ve met a fair share of those.”

“No, like he’s actually insane. Criminally,” Stephen tells him, and Will wonders if that’s not what Stephen thought he meant. “He just came from the prison downtown. I’ve read all about him,” he continues as Will feels a chill roll down his spine. Stephen doesn’t seem to notice. “What’s your name?” he asks. 

“What’s his name?” Will returns, lightheadedness nearing a peak. 

“Hannibal Lecter, but I call him Doctor just in case he prefers it...” 

Will’s chest starts to feel concave as if someone’s punched him and collapsed it. From sheer disbelief, his eyes feel dried up and watery at the same time, a combination just as impossible as the situation itself. He feels himself burning up as Stephen continues to ramble, heart beating quickly now in his chest, racing wildly between doubt and hope. “Is he there now?” he asks. 

Stephen stops whatever he’s saying to answer. “Yeah, they’re setting up the operating room in the kitchen.”

“Will Graham,” Will says breathlessly as Stephen’s eyes grow wide. “My name is Will Graham. Please, watch Wally. I’ll be back.” Just like that, he’s out the door and running along the street. He doesn’t feel the cold any more than he would on a hot summer day. 

He slows as he gets to the house with the cars, suddenly terribly unsure of what he’s doing, similar to how he felt when crossing the Atlantic; what will he do when he sees him? Now, it’s less of a question of whether to kill him or not, and more of a question of whether to just stare or talk or cry. 

However, the lack of an answer doesn’t stop his fist from knocking on the door, maybe a bit too loudly. He hears voices echo inside before the door opens with light suction. 

“Will?” Alana says in the doorway, but he hardly sees her as he looks past her into the house. “How are you here?”

“Where’s Hannibal?” he asks her. He blinks away the heat behind his eyes and forces himself to ask a little louder. “Where’s Hann—”

“Upstairs,” she says. “He’s upstairs.” He barely registers the disappointment on her face and in her voice before he slides past her. 

He jogs up the carpeted stairs, eyes searching, and opts for the door cracked open at the end of the hall. 

Without thinking, he walks into the bedroom, and only when he registers the back of Hannibal’s ash-blond hair, does the moment rain down on him, heavy like a 100-foot wave and as light as the entryway of his new house. A clear definition between the past and the future forms, another one, and so soon after the last. 

It’s almost too much to bear. Absolutely too much when Hannibal turns around, and Will watches him freeze momentarily before a tiny twitch affects his face, an unreadable mix between the relief of a terrible pain and a rare, surging elation. 

It takes Will a moment to readjust to Hannibal’s unadulterated stare, but he holds it. He doesn’t want to look away. Not ever. 

Only after he finally chooses to speak, does Will feel his own shock wear off. It does the same for his partner. “Hello, Hannibal,” he says. His hands inexplicably itch for contact— a hug, perhaps— but he keeps them firmly at his sides. 

Hannibal runs his eyes over the man in his doorway. Familiar hands, lips, shape, but not smell. “I had hoped that your choice of aftershave could get any worse,” Hannibal says, setting aside the box of latex gloves he was opening. “Yet, once again, you have managed to surprise me.” He stands, taking a few steps toward Will. “I am tempted to ask whether this is a result of fate or circumstance.”

Will allows the familiar turns of phrase to settle comfortably in his mind. “Something in the realm of predestination sounds appropriate.”

Hannibal finds himself pleased with his answer, taking another few steps. “Then, divine wrath would surely fit right in, don’t you think, Will? If I had known it would bring you to me, I would have angered God myself.” 

“Among His wrath, He offers a rare gift,” Will drops, and with the release of his words, comes a certain jubilation. If he wasn’t in control of his thoughts and actions when he burst in, he certainly is now. 

Hannibal cocks his head to the side curiously at the reference. Will has missed their conversations, the thrill of choosing his words and hearing the result of Hannibal choosing his. He could never truly do Hannibal’s mind justice in his memory palace. 

“Is that what this meeting is for you, then? A gift?”

Will glances off to the side, pocketing his hands. “Would you be opposed to a walk?”

Hannibal shakes his head just as Will feels a new presence at his back. “Think about what you’re doing, Will,” Alana says. “Please. You shouldn’t think he’s changed.”

Good, Will thinks. He addresses her without turning around. “You may have been his keeper, maybe you still are, but you aren’t mine.” A ghostly tickle runs down Hannibal’s spine at the coolness in Will’s voice. Alana seems to feel it too, as she steps aside into the hall. 

On the sidewalk, Hannibal looks in his element against the crisp, cloudless blue of the sky. As they walk, Will suddenly forgets all the things he imagined telling him, not that he would have the courage to say them aloud anyway. 

“You got married,” Hannibal starts. 

Will twists his ring, laughing at his boldness. He doesn’t know what he was expecting. They always had the comfort of not holding anything back. “I did, yeah.”

“She isn’t here.” 

“No, she died almost a week ago.” His voice matches his feelings on the matter— neutral. 

“My condolences.” 

Will wishes he wouldn’t say that.

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal begins again, and Will stops at the familiar phrase. They are almost at the cul-de-sac. “Were you ever going to visit me?”

Will takes a long breath inward, glad that at least one of them is ready to broach the subject, by proxy forcing the other to pick up the pace. He looks at the sidewalk to his left and lets the air go along with his answer. “I thought about it a lot more than I would have liked to. I knew I couldn’t stay away forever.”

“At times, forever felt like an appropriate descriptor for a day in your absence.” There is no shame in his voice at the admission. “I’m curious, did you miss me?” he asks, perhaps a negative amount of shame at the question. It startles Will, and so does the choice vulnerability he senses.

Hannibal scans Will’s face and body, analyzing and grasping at any hint of his answer, preparing for a blow that doesn’t come. 

“Yes,” Will says, an admission of his own. “Yes, I did.”

“Did you regret the choice you made, then?”

“Is that what you want? For me to regret rejecting you?” Will meets his eyes once more.

Hannibal’s face twitches again at the mention of rejection. All along, he knew that’s what Will did: rejected him, but it’s different, more brutal, coming from the horse’s mouth. 

“Do you regret it?” Hannibal asks again. 

“In part,” Will answers.

“In part?”

Suddenly, a voice from down the street: “Dad!” 

Hannibal looks behind them for the boy’s father as Wally comes to a halt before Will. Hannibal raises an eyebrow, eyes trained on the boy. “Dad, look what I found.” Wally is holding the book they were reading at home, though a newer copy of it. 

Will glances at Hannibal. “In part,” he repeats to him. 

“Will you read it to me again?” Wally asks hopefully. 

Will smiles at him. “Yeah, of course.”

“Who’s this?” Wally asks, looking at Hannibal, who has been watching the interaction closely. There is something about it he doesn’t want to disrupt, but something else he senses the nasty impulse to take away. At once, though, he makes his face pleasant and kind, offering Wally a smile as he waits to be introduced. 

As Will watches the smile float onto Hannibal’s face, he hesitates to speak. Slowly, but surely, he feels himself realigning with Hannibal’s thoughts, and he senses the fleeting urge he is covering up. After a moment, pursing his lips, he says, “Wally, this is Hannibal. Hannibal, this is Wally, my son.” 

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Wally,” Hannibal says, shaking the boy's hand. He feels Wally try to squeeze tightly and smirks at the effort. 

Only a few moments later, Hannibal is summoned back to the Shores’ to continue preparing, and Will and Wally head back to their house. 

They find the fridge and cupboards packed with food, but Will uses barely any of it. He makes them both a meal using the least amount of ingredients possible, which turns out to be buttered bread and water. He doesn’t even use the toaster.

Later, when the sun begins to set, they settle down on the rug in the living room, in front of a fire Will doesn’t dare light, and Wally hands Will the book. 

Tonight, Ben finds Henry in The Barren and they share a sweet reunion. Wally seems satisfied with this, smiling when Will reads their dialogue. The book chooses to teach the value of forgiveness and of friendship. A useful lesson, Will thinks, but not always applicable. 

Before he finishes the chapter, Will notices Wally’s head lolling to the side and his eyelids drooping. Carefully, he scoops him up in his arms and carries him up the stairs. He is getting much too big for this kind of treatment, but Will doesn’t mind the strain tonight. He knows that Wally, like himself, is having a hard time adjusting, and even more like himself, doesn’t like to show it. 

He opens a few doors with his foot until he finds one that looks like a child’s bedroom. He can’t help but feel dirty laying Wally down in someone else’s bed without permission, especially when he imagines what the other child’s fate might have been or is going to be; however, he’d feel worse leaving Wally on the couch. 

Once he is under the covers and snoozing, Will walks over to the window, through which he can see the opposite side of the street, including the house Hannibal and Alana are staying in. It’s bigger than his and strangely of Hannibal’s taste, though he’s sure they didn’t let him pick and choose. The woods stand darkly behind it, and Will thinks about what lurks in the trees. Who. He thinks about his memory palace chats with Hannibal, his creature, about the creatures out there, and he thinks about their conversation earlier, the first after what truly felt like forever. 

Hannibal was everything and nothing like what Will kept him alive as in his head. He saved his likeness, though it was starting to fade, but he filled his mouth with what he wanted him to say, when in reality, Hannibal would have no such thing done to him. 

In his unpredictability, Hannibal strikes an old wedge of excitement through Will. Looking back, he can’t imagine that he chose to rob himself of it. 

As he looks out to the forest again, then to Hannibal’s house, he starts to wonder what Hannibal’s genuine take would be on what’s going on. His real opinion, not Will’s projected one. 

Again, as if not of his own volition, he finds himself descending the stairs and putting on his boots. The winter air meets him full-force this time. He crosses the street, taking his time, not running like he had been earlier in the day. 

Earth seems to be spinning properly on its axis now. 

Will is about to knock on the door when he notices the elegant doorbell to his left. He presses it and hears the chimes echo inside. They are just as elegant as their doorbell, unobtrusive, made to compliment the activity inside the house or its silence. Whether from nerves or impatience, he presses it again a few seconds later. 

The door opens, and for some reason he expects Alana to meet and shoo him away (maybe he would let her. He isn’t feeling as bold as earlier), but he gets Hannibal in his sweatpants instead, who offers him a warm smile. 

He looks heavenly in the soft glow of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 will be posted on Monday, 2/8!


	6. Chapter 6

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal greets, glancing over him shivering on his flagstone stoop. 

“Am I bothering you?” Will asks. His words ride clouds of wispy breath. 

Hannibal takes a step backward, gesturing inside. “Not at all. Please, come in.” 

“My house. I don’t want to leave Wally.”

“Of course.” Hannibal reaches to a rack by the door and grabs a coat, putting it on as if he’s always owned it and passing a second one to Will. When he hesitates, Hannibal urges him, “I insist.” 

Reluctantly, Will pulls it on. 

As they cross the street, Will knows he didn’t seek Hannibal out solely for his opinion on the creatures, but for something else as well, something that he isn’t ready to voice. Hannibal knows now that Will missed him, and that’s already more than he was ready to give him upon first meeting. 

He doesn’t bother flicking the lights on in the entry, leading them through to the kitchen as if that’s where they’re meant to be. There, he turns on the three lights hanging above the kitchen island. 

“Stunning,” Hannibal says, running his fingers along the countertop. 

Will nods stiffly, pursing his lips as Hannibal folds his coat over one of the stools. Will keeps his own on. 

They stand silently together for a few moments, Will looking at the floor, and Hannibal looking at Will. 

He senses that Will hasn’t figured out his purpose for inviting him over yet, and it stirs something in him. “You must be starving,” he says. “Allow me to prepare you something.” 

As he starts to cross to the refrigerator, Will stops him. “Don’t. We ate earlier.”

“Clearly, nothing substantial,” Hannibal says after looking toward the sink and finding it empty. Will always had a few pots or plates “soaking” for a few hours after his meal or sometimes, Hannibal found them there over the weekend when he was asked to feed the dogs. If anything has changed about Will, he doubts it’s this. After a few moments of silence from his counterpart, he cedes. “Perhaps, a simple cup of coffee, then.” 

“Could you just not?” Will asks agitatedly. He’s taken back to his fleeting eye contact. 

“You worry about disrespecting the family.”

Will frowns. “Yes.”

“I can assure you that they are most likely deceased in Miami and do not care.”

“That’s exactly the thing,” Will says and pauses, looking up just enough to make sure Hannibal is paying attention. “I think they do care.”

Hannibal caught the brush of Will’s eyes, and now he catches the end of the rope Will seems to be throwing him. “How so?” he asks. 

“Well,” Will begins. He goes to stand opposite Hannibal in the space between the sink and island. He stares at the inches between the toes of their shoes. “Their eyes. There’s emotion in them, intent.” 

“Your empathy extends to the dead,” Hannibal says. Will either doesn’t notice or doesn’t comment on him flicking on the kettle. Perhaps, he pretends not to see it. Instead, he nods and Hannibal continues. “You think there’s reason to their madness, for it.” 

“Motive,” Will forms. 

Hannibal looks into Will’s eyes when he finally allows him to see them. He identifies the elements of a delicate hope, one that he wants to preserve as he would a building flame. “What do you see in them, Will?”

“I see light.”

The kettle gives a high-pitched squeal behind Hannibal, drawing both of their attentions. As Hannibal silences it, Will considers him next to it for a moment before peeling away from the island. He opens a cupboard above his head and takes out a jar of ground coffee beans. Hannibal nods thankfully as he waits for Will to speak again. 

“In the store I was camping in, there was a woman who kept her Changed boyfriend in the walk-in. When I watched him, I felt his anger, his despair.” 

“His, not its,” Hannibal notes. He measures out the grounds into the french press and drowns them in hot water.

“I called them it’s until I saw him, maybe because I needed to rationalize leaving Molly, dehumanize her.” He pauses. “He was somebody, an individual. He didn’t recognize his girlfriend or anyone, but he recognized something within himself. He wanted others to see it, too.”

“What would this recognition do for him if he lacks the ability to appreciate it?” The coffee steeps as Hannibal elegantly leans back against the counter. 

Will watches Hannibal’s sweater gather slightly at the bend in his abdomen. “I don’t know.” 

\---

Will’s cup of coffee steams on the mantle as he watches the fire burn beneath it. Hannibal had convinced him to light it, or more accurately, it was already burning by the time Will followed him into the living room. 

Hannibal is sitting cross-legged behind him in the armchair Will leaned against earlier when reading to Wally. 

“Your wife,” Hannibal starts, making Will aware that he has been fiddling with his ring, “what was she like?”

“She was funny, kind, a good mother,” he answers without turning around. The flames seem hotter now, but he knows it’s Hannibal’s intent stare burning through him. It is always seeking him. 

“You seem content to refer to her in past-tense.”

“It’s almost like she’s already half-faded in my mind.” Weird, Will thinks. He was able to preserve Hannibal for years, but it’s almost like he’s been searching for an excuse to make Molly a part of the past, and for longer than the past week. 

Still, he isn’t ready to turn around. He wonders if Hannibal is smiling, smirking, perhaps. 

Behind him, Hannibal’s expression morphs into one of satisfaction. Briefly, he wonders what he would have done if Will’s wife had survived and come here with him. He wouldn’t have done anything at first. He wishes he could see Will’s face, so he says his name, and this gets him turned around. “Do you feel guilty for it? For her fading?”

“In front of Wally,” Will admits, and it’s true. He hopes Wally doesn’t sense his indifference. “He had sworn to protect her and let some of that responsibility drift to me when we married. He blames himself for letting me fail.” 

“Wally is short for Walter, no?”

“Yeah.” Will doesn’t need prompting to talk about him. “He’s a good kid— sure of himself, curious.”

“Would you have introduced me if he hadn’t approached us on the street today?”

Will ponders this. “Eventually,” he says, but it sounds more like a question. “As I recall, your track record isn’t that good with my kids, surrogate or unborn. Something like a zero percent survival rate.”

“Wally makes you happy.”

“That’s always been more of a catalyst for disaster than a deterrent.” Will almost turns away again. “It’s never stopped you either way.”

“It does now,” Hannibal says and knows that he means it. He wants Will to know it, too. 

Will registers something in Hannibal’s voice that broaches what he imagined in his memory palace that it would. Something swells in his rib cage, but is immediately suppressed by doubt. 

“I spent a lot of my days missing you, Hannibal; definitely more than I should have, but I wish I could take your word on that.”

“I promise, then,” Hannibal says without pause. 

“You’ll have to do more than that. Show me.” 

“I promise you that as well.” Hannibal brings his cup to his lips, and Will remembers his own abandoned one. It’s lukewarm in his hands as he takes it and moves to the armchair adjacent Hannibal’s. 

The fire cracks around them for a few comfortable minutes, embers soaring and dancing around each other behind the glass, an orange sky busy with comets. After a time, Hannibal interrupts their astral waltz with a question. 

“Would you consider assisting me with the amputation tomorrow?” He finishes his coffee and waits for an answer. 

“I will,” he says. “Not too many volunteers, huh?”

“I am confident in your composure around blood, and in Alana’s for the most part, but yes, no volunteers besides the parents.”

“Can’t have that.”

“No.” After a moment, Hannibal rises, sensing that it’s his time to go. 

“I’ll take that,” Will says, standing and reaching for Hannibal’s cup. Their fingers brush as Hannibal passes Will the handle. 

Will hopes Hannibal doesn’t feel the shiver run through him at the contact, and Hannibal hopes Will feels the one rolling down his spine. They look to each other’s faces as if to check, but only Will gets confirmation of his hope. 

They walk to the door, into the entryway that now seems to pack them together in its darkness. 

Hannibal feels like he should say something, but the rare occasion strikes when nothing comes to mind. Will has many things he wants to say, but nothing he feels comfortable revealing. “Goodnight,” Hannibal finally musters. 

“Goodnight, Hannibal,” Will replies as the door opens and closes in front of him. 

Hannibal carries Will’s voice with him across the street, the lawn, and into his house. As he goes to hang his coat on the rack, he realizes he’s forgotten it and that Will’s response alone shielded him from the cold night. 

In bed, the impossible events of the day dance about him as comets do in a fireplace. Perhaps, their meeting was, indeed, predestination, and all roads lead precisely here.

Had God not known what a defiant and challenging child Hannibal would be when he held and crafted his destiny? That he would denounce the idea of a Plan and believe in his own volition to change his and anyone’s fate? That he would grow to not only live without fear of wrath but welcome it? This divine foolishness inspires a spark of sly contempt. 

Why had He destined him for love of all His other, better children? 

Or, perhaps as a defector, Hannibal is destined for rejection, for fall after fall after fall after fall after fall after fall. 

No, he decides. If this is the case, he will fight fate with all his ferocity and might. Now that Will is here, he will not leave him. Not ever. He will rather die than leave or be left again. 

\---

The next morning, Will’s voice is still ringing in Hannibal’s head. A goodnight melting into a good morning. 

The guest room he’s sleeping in has one window, one that faces the small backyard and the forest. He can’t see the neighborhood as he had from the balcony in the master bedroom, and he can’t see Will’s house or the Shores’, which he imagines empty compared to yesterday. He had ordered there to be no one in or out of the home 16 hours before the surgery, for purposes of sterility. 

The upcoming operation is but a passing thought as Will returns to the forefront of his mind. 

As he steps out of bed and walks down the length of the hall, he wonders what he and his son will be eating today, if anything. The urge to go across the street and make them something emerges, but he suppresses it with the desire not to crowd Will. 

Restraint in building up his relationships isn’t new to him, but restraint as it touches his cooking certainly is. 

He navigates the winding halls and makes his way downstairs, to the kitchen. It is as big as his own was, but much brighter in color and with larger windows that let the light splash across the white marble countertops. 

Will’s is much more his style, darker with more steel. Quite ironic, he thinks, considering the exteriors of the houses are the exact opposites. 

He opens the refrigerator and thoughts of anything else, except what’s in front of him, seem to melt away. Ideas for favor pairings and preparation methods dance around in his head, getting more and more indulgent as they continue to come. 

As he sets the oven to 375 degrees and kneads the dough, he thinks about fillings and pastes, fresh parsley, and the scents that all the combinations will bring. 

By the time Alana limps into the kitchen, his creation is warm in his mitts as he takes it out of the oven. 

“Good morning,” she greets. It’s finally her turn to look amused. 

“Good morning, Alana. Date, parsley, and sumac quiche with almonds,” he explains as he sets it on the birchwood top of the island to cool. 

“Indulgent. Reminds me of our time together,” she laughs. She perceives Hannibal’s excellent mood as he offers a smaller smile in return. 

“Careful, now. You are married.”

“So is Will Graham,” she says as she rests her hands on the other side of the island. 

“Recently widowed, I’m afraid,” Hannibal tells her with feigned regret. 

Alana’s face twists for real. “That’s terrible.” 

“It is.” His voice returns to its unsettling lightness. He turns toward the cupboards to get them each a plate and utensils. 

“So, does any of this—” She gestures to bowls and whisks and spoons— “have anything to do with our new neighbor?”

Hannibal allows himself a frown as he slices the quiche and deals it out. “He, unfortunately, would not let me cook for him.” 

“I commend him on that much. You think he’s turned off by the lack of human meat?” She asks as she takes her slice.

“I hope that isn’t the case because I would be more than eager to provide for him.” He watches closely as Alana brings the fork up to her mouth, but is disappointed when she retracts it as her thoughts catch up with the statement. 

“You’ve spotted someone rude.”

“I may have.”

“Tom. You want to eat him.”

Hannibal pauses. “Preposterous.” 

“You’re not fooling anyone. At least not me.” She finally takes a bite of her breakfast, disappointing Hannibal further with how unceremoniously she does it. “You do so well with parsley. Hardly a need for anything more exotic.”

Just then, a loud, intrusive knock sounds at their door. “I will answer it,” Hannibal says, annoyed at having their meal interrupted. He sets his fork down as Alana does hers. 

“I’ll come.”

When Hannibal opens the door, they are met with Tom’s flushed, waiting face. “Hello, Tom,” he greets. 

“Alana,” he says, “Hannibal. I’m collecting information for a census. I already have your names, so where are you from.”

“Baltimore,” Alana tells him simply. 

“Me, too,” Hannibal follows, “born and raised.” 

Tom gives him a look before jotting down their locations in a notepad. “How old are you?”

Alana pauses before she forms a shy, “Thirty-one.”

“Sixty-three,” Hannibal tells him.

“And really?” he asks him. 

“And a half.” 

“Your occupations, besides being in prison, and no funny answers, please.”

“I am a psychiatrist,” Alana begins slowly, as if feeding Hannibal an answer, “and the general administrator as the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.” 

Tom finishes writing and looks stonily to Hannibal. 

“I am also a psychiatrist, but also a surgeon and a passionate home cook.” 

Tom reckons with the last bit, struggling whether to register it as a threat, a joke, or the truth. He looks to Alana for help. 

“He means to ask you if you would like some of the quiche he made,” she says. 

“No.” Tom shakes his head. “I do have some other business for you, though.” Hannibal raises his eyebrows. “I’m imposing a curfew on him.” He points at Hannibal and speaks to Alana. “You’re to enforce it. He should be in the house after 9 P.M. and until 6 A.M.”

“Have I done anything to warrant one?” Hannibal asks. 

“Sneaking around in the middle of the night’ll do it.”

“Hardly sneaking,” he retorts. “I simply crossed the street to visit a new arrival, who happens to be an old friend of mine.”

“And came back at two in the morning.” Tom crosses his arms, shoving the notepad uncomfortably under his armpit. 

Hannibal hadn’t realized it was that late, but an idea graces him. “You will have to tell my friend about the curfew and be very firm about it. From experience, you shouldn’t allow him any leeway for choice.” 

Perhaps, he can make Will dislike Tom as he does.

“I’ll be lucky if I find your friend alive in there,” Tom says and turns away. “Good day.” 

“Good day,” Hannibal says to his back and closes the door. 

“Will is smarter than your tricks,” Alana says. 

“Come, let’s finish our breakfast,” he replies, guiding her back to the kitchen. “We were so rudely interrupted.”

\---

When Tom comes to Will’s door, he is sitting at the dining table with Wally after he finally dares to cook. Scrambled eggs and bacon. 

It’s their first sit-down meal without Molly and, gazing at Wally, he thinks of how he has become a father figure to another orphan, and how similar he is to Abigail. 

When he wandered into his room after Hannibal left last night, he thought he must have acquired Wally while looking for her, how the only thing that stands between Wally and perceiving himself as an orphan is the thin line separating Will from a stranger and the role he is in now. 

Tom’s knock comes, and Will answers it. “Hi,” he greets, wondering how hard the man must be working to be sweating in the freezing temperatures. But who is he to judge?

Tom asks him his name, where he’s from, his age, and occupation. Will gives it all to him, and then, he asks, “How do you know Hannibal Lecter?”

Will hums. “I find that hardly pertinent to the census.” 

“My version of it is more extensive.” 

Will glances off to the side and tells him what he’s told everyone who has asked him in the last two years. “Some say that I caught him. I say that he caught himself.” 

“Despite your history, he deems you friends,” Tom says curiously, with an edge Will barely catches. Is he doubting him or Hannibal?

“I can’t say that’s far from the truth.”

“I thought you were a mechanic.”

“I am. I was an FBI profiler. Anything else, Tom?”

“Yes,” he says. Crossing his arms and puffing out his chest just as he had done at Hannibal’s door. “Hannibal isn’t to be out of his house from nine at night ‘til six in the morning. You aren’t to invite him over, nothing.”

Will furrows his eyebrows. “I can assure you I can handle myself and him.”

“No,” Tom says firmly. “He’s dangerous; you ought to know that.”

“I certainly know better than you,” Will snaps. 

Sensing his agitation, Tom steps forward, a movement that seems oddly exaggerated. “Those are the rules, no leeway. You follow them or you leave.” 

Will purses his lips as he glances at Hannibal’s house. “Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Will closes the door before he can say ‘good day’. 

Wally comes out from behind the corner, where he had been standing quietly. “Hannibal was in jail?” he asks. “You said you caught him. Was that when you worked for the FBI?”

Will’s jaw tightens as he watches Tom lumber down the street to the next house. He turns to Wally and says, “Yes. He was in jail once.”

“Is that how you got your scar? Did he hurt you when you were catching him?” Wally has never asked about it before, though Will is sure he’s noticed it. He can at once make Wally wary of Hannibal, distrustful of him. But maybe against his better judgment, he doesn’t want to. 

Wally is younger than Abigail, but he isn’t as naive. All he can do is hope that he doesn’t share her same fate. “No.”

\---

Will walks with Wally toward the Shores’ house, greeting neighbors on the way and taking pride in Wally’s manners as he does the same. At the door, Mrs. Shores— Will can tell it’s her by the nervous cross of her arms and her eyebags— is chatting with another woman. She greets him as he comes up the steps. “Welcome,” she says quietly. 

“Thank you. I’m Will and this is Wally.” Wally nods stiffly. “I’m assisting Dr. Lecter with the surgery, and I was wondering if Wally can wait in your living room. He’ll be quiet, he has a book to read.” Wally lifts the book to show them. A different one than they’ve been reading.

“Oh,” says the other woman, “actually, he can come stay with me if he’d like. I have a son, John. He’s eight, so maybe they’d get along.”

“What do you say?” Will asks him. 

“Sure.”

“I’m Paige, by the way,” says John’s mother and flashes him a smile. “Let’s go.” Will watches her lead Wally back down the street after she points out her house.

The atmosphere inside is one of anxiety and so much so that, to Will, the molecules seem to bounce off the wall in their tension.

Hannibal seems unaffected by any of this as Will catches him pushing up his sleeves in the living room. A small smile settles on his face in greeting as his eyes land on Will. 

It doesn’t occur to him until this moment that Will might not show, but now that he’s here, it fills him with gratitude. 

Today, Hannibal wears a waistcoat and a matching pair of trousers. They don’t quite fit him, hanging a bit loosely, but he manages to pull them off just fine. 

“Right on time,” he says. He sends Will off to wash his hands before putting on their protective equipment, and Will brushes past Alana on her way back from the bathroom. She gives him a polite smile to conceal her nervousness. 

When he returns to the living room, Hannibal is decked out in a light blue gown, hairnet and mask of the same color, white gloves tugged tightly over the wrists of the gown. Even all wrapped up, he retains an air of elegance and refinement, perhaps by his immaculate posture or the sharpness of his gaze. 

He is helping Alana tie her gown in the back, nimble fingers fastening quick bows. As he finishes and turns, Will can only see the slivers of Hannibal’s eyes. The brown in them looks confident and calm, cool like earth in the fall. He helps Will just the same with his ties before speaking through his mask. 

“Please go to the kitchen. Will and I will bring Elisabeth down,” he says to Alana, and she heads off with a nod. “Mask first,” Hannibal tells Will as he goes to pick up the gloves, and surprises himself at how easily hospital procedure comes back to him. 

When Will is dressed, they crinkle up the stairs and into the master bedroom, where Elisabeth lays still. Her leg has blackened further over the past day and a half, and midday yesterday, she had lost feeling around her knee. Her eyelids drag open when Will grabs her under her shoulders, and Hannibal under her knees and waist. They move in tandem and without communicating. 

They lay her out on the kitchen island, which has been covered with a plastic sheet. Two doors leading to the kitchen have been sealed off, but a third, leading outside, has been left cracked open. 

“Alana,” Hannibal says, “if you would, please mix the bleach and rubbing alcohol outdoors in the third bottle.”

“Chloroform,” Will says, as Alana proceeds to do as she has been instructed. 

“Yes. Are you okay, Elisabeth?” Hannibal asks the girl. His voice is precise and commanding, but light. 

She nods; okay as she can be. 

Hannibal reaches over to a narrow pub table standing in between him and Will that’s been set up with a tray containing all the tools he had asked for, including a large bone saw. 

He picks out a black marker and leans over Elisabeth’s leg, feeling for her knee through the swelling. He marks a line a few inches above it and grabs a long strip of white paper from the tray. Just as he is wrapping it around her leg, they hear muffled voices from outside the door to the living room. Hannibal pays them no mind. “Will,” he says, “lift the leg, please.” 

Turning his attention away from the door, Will does, and Hannibal passes the strip under it. A few loud raps sound as Alana comes inside. 

“Hello!” Tom’s voice rasps. “Hannibal!” Hannibal barely turns his head. 

“Alana, if you would.” 

Alana sighs, tiring of hobbling back and forth across the room, and opens the door to see Tom, red and sweaty. 

“Who's here?” he asks. “I want to help with the surgery.”

“This is Alana,” she says through her mask, “there we have Will Graham and Hannibal.”

“You three together?” he sputters. “I’m helping.”

Hannibal turns, his irritation at the disturbance growing. “I rather you not. If you so wish, you can clean yourself and observe.” Whatever lightness Will heard in his voice before is gone and has been replaced with an equal amount of steel. He never quite lets himself slip into anger, but the acidity is there. 

“Where can I get the mask and—” Alana shuts the door. Hannibal raises his eyebrows at her and she shakes her head. 

“Focus,” she says. Hannibal continues to mark Elisabeth’s leg, measuring and contouring for flaps. 

Tom eventually comes back in. He slides along the back wall and lowers himself into a chair, where he sits silently until it comes time to put Elisabeth under. 

“The bottle, please, Alana, and a towel,” Hannibal requests, outstretching his hand. 

“Are you sure you remember how to do this?” Tom says smugly from his place as he watches Alana pass him what he asked for. 

“Would you prefer to be my practice dummy?” Hannibal asks him. 

He huffs. “Someone better keep track of that leg once it’s off.”

“He has no interest in spoiled meat,” Will tells him, and it comes out a bit defensively. Hannibal grins amusedly under his mask.

“Elisabeth,” Hannibal says, as he pours some of the mixture onto the towel. “You will need to inhale deeply several times after I place the towel over your nose and mouth. Can you do that for me?” Elisabeth nods in response and he proceeds. Her eyelids slowly droop until her head drops to the side. 

Hannibal presses his fingers to the pulse in her neck and keeps them there for several seconds. “Alana,” he says as she crosses to the other side of the table. “Find the pulse in her wrist and monitor it. I will ask nothing else of you. Will, a bag.” 

Will hands him a zip-lock from the tray, and he drops the towel in, sealing it. He takes a scalpel from the tray himself, and without much ado, he makes the first incision, a decisive cut along one of the lines he drew. As he slices through skin and tissue and fascia, a thick ooze of blood seeps out. 

“God,” Tom says from the corner, averting his eyes. 

“Clear the blood, please,” Hannibal says calmly to Will. 

Will does as he is told, Hannibal’s voice and direction guiding him. It’s as if Hannibal’s calm passes to him through the table between them. Hannibal cuts deeper and the blood doesn’t come out as readily anymore. 

Hannibal pushes back on the glistening red flesh and spies Elisabeth’s vessels, proceeding to cut through muscle down to her femur bone. “Lift the leg, please,” Hannibal says, and Will obeys, cleaning away blood with his free hand, and watching Hannibal repeat the same process on the posterior flap. 

Hannibal points at the large retractor claw and motions for Will and him to switch places. 

Once they do, he says, “Pull this back.” Hannibal points at the thick quadriceps muscle, and as Will obeys, the claw reveals a clear view of the femur, a gray in a sea of pink and seeping red. “Higher,” Hannibal says and reaches over to correct Will’s hand with his own. 

Some of the fresh blood staining Hannibal’s latex stains Will’s and stays. 

Once Hannibal clears away some of the tissue, he locates the popliteal vein and artery, quickly suturing and cutting them. 

When he does, a light spray from the artery goes flying in Will’s direction, splattering in a diagonal across his gown and up toward his mask. Hannibal’s eyes only flick up to him momentarily, but Will notes their hungry glint. 

As he picks up the bone saw, Alana speaks, drawing their attention. “Hannibal, her pulse— it’s slowing.” 

Hannibal reaches for Elisabeth’s other arm, locating her weakening pulse and trading places once again with Will. After a moment, there is no pulse to be felt. 

“What’s going on?” Tom demands. Hannibal places a finger under her nose to check for breathing, encountering only stillness against his glove. 

“Alana, please start the AED,” he says before addressing Tom. “The use of an anesthetic was a risk in her weakened state, but one her parents insisted on. The risk was always that she wouldn’t wake up again.” Even in crisis, Will observes, Hannibal is as calm as he was when he greeted him in the living room. 

_Unit O.K._ , announces the AED in the background. Hannibal uses the trauma shears to swiftly cut through the layers of clothing as Alana sets the AED on the table. Hannibal adheres the two pads, one on her right, just below the collar bone, and the other lower on her left side. 

_Analyzing patient_ , says the AED. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Tom asks overtop it. 

_Shock advised._

“Clear,” Hannibal calls as he presses the button to shock. Elisabeth’s body jolts once and comes back to rest. 

_Begin CPR._

Hannibal lines his hands up and starts the compressions, followed by two rescue breaths. 

Will looks at Alana watching the scene with trepidation and at Tom, who looks like he wants to ask another question he won’t get an answer to. Hannibal continues his compressions and breaths for two more rounds before they hear another, _Shock advised_. 

Hannibal steps back again, pressing the button. “Clear.” Another jolt and another settling into stillness. “Her pulse, Alana,” Hannibal reminds her. 

_Begin CPR._

Hannibal goes through the process two times before they hear Tom mutter to himself, “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

“Please, Tom,” Hannibal says between his counting of compressions, “take our patient as an example and relax.” 

Tom stands, shocked and fuming. “That’s it. I’m telling her parents—”

“Shut up,” Alana says. “Her pulse is back.” 

Hannibal steps back and observes as Elisabeth’s chest rises in a shaky breath. Will can hear everyone in the room let one out just like it, except for Hannibal, who is reaching for the bone saw. He hands Will the retractor and they switch positions once again. 

Hannibal cuts into the femur diagonally, beveling it before cutting into it vertically. The grinding of bone against jagged metal teeth echoes around the vast kitchen, causing Alana to cringe. Will just watches the particles of white land on the surrounding red. Soon, the thick bone falls into two parts, and it’s as if the surgery passes a climax. The leg is now clearly divided into two parts. 

The rest of the surgery goes smoothly. Hannibal cuts away the clinging muscle from the to-be discarded bone, asking Will to clean the blood as it spurts, and files down the remaining femur stump. He sutures and cuts the thick sciatic nerve before cleaning out the wound. 

He folds the flaps he contoured before over the stump, and rows of sutures are laid down, sealing it up, followed by layers of gauze and pads and xeroform until finally, the work is finished. Tom sighs exaggeratedly in the corner, Alana places her hands on her hips and hunches, and Will watches Hannibal suppress a tired yawn. Elisabeth continues to lay still. 

Will and Hannibal take her back to the master bedroom, where Hannibal finds the fresh sheets he ordered to be placed. 

In the hall, they each peel off their equipment, and Hannibal’s mask comes off to reveal a barely noticeable smirk that is half self-satisfied and half pleased to see Will’s full face. 

“Thank you for assisting me,” he says. “Though I found you to be very quiet. I always preferred my nurses to be chatty.” 

“I was observing,” Will offers as an apology as he pulls at the bows in his gown. 

“Me?” 

“Among other things,” Will says. 

“The blood, then.”

Will pauses. “I haven’t seen so much in a while. Besides Molly.”

“It looks flattering on you. It makes you look more like yourself.” 

Will watches the trace of Hannibal’s eyes along his neck to just above his eyes and remembers the spray. He rubs at the spots as Hannibal frowns. “I know you told Tom to be hard on me about your curfew.”

“Does it bother you?” Hannibal asks. 

“He would have done it anyway, though with less grandeur. I know what you’re doing. I know that you want me to know.” 

Hannibal pauses, considering. “Is it working?”

Will sighs inwardly, this time tracing his own eyes over Hannibal’s countenance, his prison unflattering haircut, the sharp cut of his cheekbones, his eyes that still look determined, but softer now. 

“Come over to my house before curfew,” Will says. “You can cook if you want. And get your coat.”

Hannibal hadn’t smiled when Elisabeth’s heart had started or when he finished the surgery, but the thought of exploring Will’s fridge and watching him take his first bite makes the corners of his mouth twitch upwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7 will be posted on Monday, 2/15!


	7. Chapter 7

Hannibal steps through into Will’s entry wearing a new suit, still ill-fitting, and carrying a sweaty bottle of white wine. 

Before Will shuts the door, in his peripheral, he spies a large mass passing under the light of a streetlamp before being consumed by darkness once again. Under the next lamp, Will sees that it’s Tom eyeing them, watching. 

Caring for Elisabeth and talking to her parents had taken a substantial amount of time, allowing darkness to fall and leaving them only a few hours before Hannibal’s curfew. 

Once again, Will shows him straight to the kitchen, but this time, there is no milling or stalling. Hannibal opens the fridge and Will opens the cupboard for two wine glasses. 

An idea for a dish comes to Hannibal immediately as he sees the mushrooms on the top shelf and the chicken breasts in the freezer. “Observe or participate?” he asks as he lines the ingredients up on the island. 

“Participate, if I won't mess it up,” Will says and hands Hannibal a glass. 

“I am confident in your ability to follow directions after today’s performance. Cutting boards?”

Will takes two out of a drawer. “You had a close call there,” he says. 

“You needn’t remind me. I am certain Tom will make sure that the incident lives in everyone’s memory. He made quite the scene telling Elisabeth’s parents about it.” 

“Did they listen?” Will asks.

“To my retelling of events more closely.”

“All's well that ends well, I suppose.”

Hannibal nods, laying out a handful of mushrooms on Will’s board. “Slice these lengthwise, please.” 

Will picks up his knife and stares at the first mushroom. How thick does Hannibal want the slices? How thin? If it’s for decoration, it must matter, he thinks, but it seems too humiliating to ask. 

Given the anxiety he feels from just this, he hopes cutting mushrooms to be his only job for the night. For that reason, he cuts the second one more slowly, and the third one slower still. 

In the time that Will completes his one task, Hannibal completes five and makes time for conversation. “Where was Wally during the operation?” he asks. 

“Paige’s house, with her son. He seemed to have fun.”

“I see.”

“He’s in his room drawing,” Will explains. “He picked it up right before we had to flee, and there are more supplies here than he had, actually. He’ll give you some if you ask.” 

“Perhaps, I will.” Hannibal turns away from the stove, and Will can feel him hovering over his shoulder. 

The something he wants to say hangs in the air between them. 

“I’m doing it wrong.” An unfounded shame starts to emerge. It’s a talent of Hannibal’s to make someone feel the wildest emotions over the smallest things. Or nothing at all over the biggest ones. “You can just say that.”

“They are too thick, Will.” 

“Sorry,” he apologizes. Shame turns into defensiveness and bubbles up under his skin, behind his eyes, as he lays down the knife. 

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Hannibal assures. 

When Will attempts to move away so that Hannibal can do it himself, he is tugged back into place by his wrist. Hannibal puts the knife back in Will’s hand, wrapping both their fingers around the handle, and grabs the last mushroom. 

Will looks at their hands together, this time no latex between them, and is reminded of when he visited his mind palace the night of the attack. He lets Hannibal press them side to side.

“Let the knife do the work,” Hannibal says as he rocks the blade with him. The slices turn out thin and even, falling gently to the side. 

Will’s skin is rough, slightly sweaty in Hannibal’s dry hand. 

Hannibal also feels against his rib cage that Will’s own has been completely still the entire time, that he had stopped breathing the second they made contact. 

After a time, when his lungs begin to burn, Will notices this as well. 

A ripple of satisfaction rolls through Hannibal as he peels away from him slowly and feels the air fill Will once more. 

“Thanks,” Will mutters and starts to rework what he has already done. Silently, Hannibal sips his wine and observes him from his place by the oven while he waits for it to heat up.

“Hi,” Wally says, appearing in the doorway, and it’s as if his voice pierces through a building bubble. 

“Good evening,” Hannibal replies, nodding in his direction. The oven sounds beside him. 

“What are we having?” Wally asks, wandering up to them. 

“Ask Hannibal,” Will says. “I’m just the sous chef.” 

“You must never ask,” Hannibal tells Wally as he moves a tray into the oven. “It spoils the surprise.”

Wally gives a hint of a smile. He’s always liked small surprises. The big ones were never good. “But Dad already knows what it is.”

“I am sure your father can keep a secret for a few more minutes.” Hannibal goes back to stirring his sauce on the stove and accepts Will’s mushrooms when he passes them over. 

“Can I try that?” Wally asks, gazing into the pan, at the bubbles popping and sliding about. 

“When it’s finished,” Hannibal tells him.

He doesn’t seem to catch the dismissive note in his voice, and neither does Wally, but Will turns around and gives him a pointed look that says, Tone. 

Hannibal briefly wonders if Will had learned the look from Molly, and if she had to use it on him in the beginning. 

They task Wally with setting the table, and soon Hannibal sends Will away to sit down with him, leaving him to plate alone. He must retain at least some sliver of mystery, after all. 

“Prosciutto, cheese, and herb-stuffed chicken roulade with a mushroom sauce.” He sets their plates down before them, Wally’s first. 

Before he sits down, he refills Will’s glass, and then his own. 

Hannibal watches Will cut off a bite and place it in his mouth. As he does, his eyes skid over Hannibal’s and he almost cracks a smile as he feels his anticipation, a silent, _Well?_ sliding across the table towards him. 

“It’s delicious, thank you,” he says and Hannibal nods, satisfied. “How is it, Wally?”

“Good,” he says after he finishes chewing.

“It’s never too early to start refining one’s palette,” Hannibal says and looks to Will, who in turn looks unsure of whether it’s okay to laugh at the reference. Hannibal does nothing to indicate either way. 

“How did the surgery go?” Wally asks. 

“It was good,” Will answers. “Elisabeth is fine.”

“What happens to the leg after it’s cut?” Wally asks next, and Will turns his lips up at the odd question. It’s Hannibal who answers this one. 

“Her parents asked to see it, so I performed an autopsy of sorts to show them why it needed to be removed.”

“An autopsy is like where you cut open dead stuff?” 

Hannibal can see why Will’s two-word description of Wally had to contain _curious_. 

“Yes, usually to see why it had died. Are you interested in medicine, Wally? Had you aspired to become a doctor?”

Wally shrugs. “I don’t know. This guy came to our school that knew about CPR. That was kinda cool. Sometimes we learn about body stuff in science.” 

He looks at Will. “It wouldn’t hurt to learn some first aid.” 

“As long as I don’t find any cadavers in the kitchen.” 

“Cadavers?” Wally asks, and Hannibal begins his explanation. 

Will soon sits back and watches their interaction as he eats. It becomes an effortless and natural back and forth before long. 

Wally grasps onto Hannibal’s knowledge, at times very seriously coming to his own conclusions, and Hannibal seems equally pleased to share as to listen. 

Maybe this is him ‘showing’ Will, as he had requested, extending himself and making good on his promise in his own way. 

For a second, as Will allows warmth to coat the future, he entertains a stretch of nights like these. Perhaps, it’s too much to wish for but, as he looks at the two, Hannibal nodding along politely to yet another conclusion, and Wally swinging his legs in his chair, he thinks that it’s not. 

After dinner, Wally bounds back up the stairs, and Will and Hannibal light the fire in the living room once more after pouring themselves more wine, a new bottle from Will’s storeroom. 

They find themselves going quietly through the three small bookshelves lined up side by side along the wall. Will hadn't given himself a chance to explore them, and Hannibal compares them to the ones he found in his new house. 

“You can borrow— take— anything you’d like,” Will tells him as he turns a smaller book over in his hand. Next to him, Hannibal browses the middle shelf, all fiction, with waning interest. 

“I have always been attracted more to books containing practical knowledge.”

“Knowledge you can show off.”

A sly grin. “Yes, perhaps. Apart from the classics, I never took much interest in fiction novels.” He heads toward his armchair, and Will follows him. 

“Even if it feels like we’re living in one?”

“To me, there is nothing I hope to be more real.”

“Hm.” Will’s eyes wander from Hannibal’s crossed legs back to the bookshelf. “Then, is there any practical knowledge you can apply?”

“Free will and volition often come up in philosophical readings. Your description of the Rained cites them as being deeply emotionally sentient. Is this sentience simply motivation for destruction they choose to inflict or is it a governing force, for which the mind and body are only a vessel?”

“They don’t choose to do what they do, no. The emotion they feel is too visceral for there to be any accompanying thought,” Will concludes. “Their actions wreak of vengeance, but what’s in their eyes doesn’t always match.”

Hannibal considers this. “‘The eyes are the windows to the soul’.”

“And the view through them is dirtied by a layer of dirt: their ugly appearance and uglier actions. Their light is concealed by darkness. Shrouded in it.”

“Can you identify with that?” 

“I can empathize with it.” Will hesitates, unsure if what he’ll say next will re-open a door he’s spent so long sealing up. Nonetheless, “I identify more with their inverse.”

“Darkness contained by light. Them and you: two identities too disparate to bridge.”

“Yes.”

“You seem intent on understanding somebody so different from yourself.”

“They’re different from anybody I’ve ever tried to understand,” Will says. 

Hannibal gives a nod of agreement. “Then, if it is a puzzle you wish to pursue the solution for, I will assist you in every way I can.”

Will takes a sip of his wine to hide his smile. “Thank you.”

\---

The next morning brings rain, freezing and cold. The clock hasn’t struck 7 A.M. when Will is woken up by the commotion outside. 

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and shaking the pins from the arm he fell asleep on, he stands and brushes the curtains aside. 

He sees his neighbors pouring out of their houses and rushing towards the main gates. Hannibal and Alana’s house stands, dark, against the gray clouds. 

Will pulls on a pair of pants before checking on Wally, who remains sound asleep under the covers. He creeps downstairs and looks for a rain jacket or an umbrella, but finding neither, he pulls on the jacket Hannibal gave him and swings out the door. 

Outside, the rain mists his hair and settles uncomfortably on his face. He cringes at the temperature and wraps his arms around himself. Nobody talks to him on the way to the gates, either too concerned with what might be happening or too unhappy to be out, like himself. 

On Hannibal’s way out the door, he grabs an extra raincoat. 

He helps Alana down the steps as she uses an umbrella for a cane. He thinks she looks quite funny, like Mary Poppins, though he would never say it. 

In front of him, he sees a hunched figure hugging himself, walking at a snail’s pace. He doesn’t run after him, but Will turns around when his name is called. He stops and waits for them to catch up. 

“Put this on,” Hannibal says, extending the coat as Alana rolls her eyes. Silently, shivering, Will takes off his old, damp coat and puts on the new one, failing to notice how he naturally hands it to Hannibal in a trade. 

Hannibal carries it for him without a word as they approach the gate. 

Through the chatter of the small crowd that has gathered, they can hear the familiar chanting of, “Rain! Rain!” and the rattling of the gates. A small hoard of the Rained has gathered at them, pushing up on them, and some slamming their bodies. Some of their neighbors point tearfully, recognizing and naming them. 

The gates have started to bulge inward where they meet in the middle. 

“What do we do, Tom?” someone calls out in the crowd. Tom is standing back from the gates, but forward from the group with his fingers spread out flat on the damp top of his cap. He doesn’t answer for a moment, but then the moment stretches, and it becomes clear he doesn’t plan to.

A pocket knife dangles in his hand, intended to be used, but still waiting. For the courage? For consent? Provocation and resulting necessity?

From behind the group, comes a shout, panicked and desperate. “Jenny! Kevin!” A woman sprints down the street clad in a thin pair of slippers and a t-shirt and with seemingly no regard for the terrible cold. Hannibal and Will look away when they see she isn’t wearing any pants. “Jenny and Kevin! Are they there?” She pushes through the crowd to the gates, and only Tom stops her from making a full collision. “Are they here?” she asks again. 

“No, Mrs. Lorn. They aren’t,” Tom says. 

The woman, Mrs. Lorn, lets out a wail and crashes to the asphalt, weeping for everyone to see and hear. Alana furrows her brows and tries to figure out the cause of her distress, Will feels it, and Hannibal, after feeling a fleeting amusement at the scene, starts to grow quite bored. 

“So, what do we do?” the same man calls out. “They’re going to knock the gates down if we keep stalling!” A few people voice their agreement. Hannibal shifts and Will eyes him, sensing the restless energy. There is an air of unpredictability, low and rolling to it that makes Will want to step back, not knowing whether if in self-preservation or permission. As it grows with intensity, Alana seems to feel its radiation as well. 

“Hannibal,” she cautions, “don’t put yourself in a bad position.”

Hannibal sees Tom, who is still milling about in front, sees his uncertainty, his desire for action. For Hannibal, there is one clear answer that he is sure is also present in everyone else’s minds, but in his, it’s not obstructed by familiarity or hinged by fear of judgment.

“Hold this, if you will,” he says to Will, and hands him back his coat. He makes his way through the crowd quickly, sliding between heads and shoulders. When he gets to the front, in one swift motion, he yanks the knife from Tom’s hand and plunges it into one of the Rained’s heads. 

A surprised gasp rises behind him as he repeats the action with two more. The third runs into the blade with a charge and slides down the metal bars to the ground. 

Before Hannibal can turn around, Tom comes up behind him and snatches the blade back. “Menace!” he yells. “Look at him!” he says to the group. “A menace!” The group simply blinks back at them, silent and busy processing what has happened. Even Mrs. Lorn has quit her wailing. 

In the back, Hannibal can see Alana raise her eyes to God. Will simply raises his eyebrows. 

“He’s dangerous,” Tom continues. “Who in their right mind can do such a thing?” 

More silence. 

“I think he did what we couldn’t do,” says the voice of the man from earlier. A tall, worried form emerges from the crowd to claim his words. He presses forward, taking the knife from Tom once more, though more gently, and handing it back to Hannibal. “This needs to be done, and if he can do it, good on him. Good for us.”

“He’s right,” says another woman, one who recognized a friend in the hoard. “We can’t afford pile-ups.”

“You can’t—“ Tom starts, but closes his mouth when he doesn’t meet any faces as incensed as his own.

He looks back toward the gates. Some of the pressure from their middle has been eased and they no longer rock as violently. “This will be your job, then, Menace,” he seethes. “Since you seem to be multi-talented.” Hannibal simply nods and turns the knife over in his hand. 

The crowd begins to disperse, the wailing woman included. Sympathetically, Alana watches her stagger back up the street as she and Will come to the gate for Hannibal. 

“Tell me, Will,” he says, “what do you believe to be the philosophical considerations for killing the emotionally sentient.”

“Well, when those being considered are deceased, I’d say you might find a reading that says ‘dead is dead’.”

Next, Hannibal turns to Alana. “You needn’t worry about me,” he says. “I will always anticipate my position.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8 will be posted on Monday, 2/22!


	8. Chapter 8

“36.5 degrees,” Hannibal declares, peering at the thermometer’s tiny, blue screen. “Perfectly normal.” 

“Great,” Paige sighs. She wears her uncertainty plainly on her face as she runs her fingers through John’s hair. He sits hunched on a stool in Hannibal’s kitchen with his hands laid out tiredly on his knees. His countenance bears the same fatigue found in his fingers. 

“He has lost weight, no?” Hannibal notes. “You as well.”

Paige eyes him for any sign of accusation or judgment, but finds no trace of either. A simple observation. “Food is running low, so we can’t eat as much as we used to.”

“Yes, I realize.” He begins to put away his supplies— stethoscope, flashlight, the thermometer— back into their bag. 

“Others have complained about it too, then,” she says. 

“Oh, yes,” he assures her. “Almost all who come to see me.”

\---

By the time a week goes by following the incident at the gates, under sheets and sheets of freezing rain, life in the neighborhood settles in a quiet way. With nothing to do, Will watches it become so. 

With no set responsibilities and no desire or need to socialize with his neighbors, he spends empty, crawling days in his house, for the most part alone. 

Wally’s days, riveting compared to Will’s, are spent with John, either under the patio roof in their backyard or in the basement playroom of Paige’s house. Midway through the week, Elizabeth begins to join the boys for short visits. Her parents wheel her down and across the street under an umbrella, in a chair Stephen found when searching one of the abandoned houses, and John and Wally stop their tag or hide and seek to sit down for a board game. 

Elizabeth’s stump begins to heal under Hannibal’s intensive care, which takes most of the day and often stretches into the evening. When he is not with Elizabeth, he sees people with any health concerns in his house, which turns out to be a lot of people, especially the elderly. When he isn’t doing that, he is visiting the gates to check for Rained. When that is finished, he finds the time to cook for Will and Wally. 

When he asks about it, he tells Will that he isn’t fatigued by a long day and that before prison, he preferred a tight schedule. He tells him it’s just tedious, unrewarding work. “Additionally,” he added on, “I periodically feel irritation at not being able to see you, just as I did back then.” 

Unable to respond, Will lets the moment slip, and Hannibal goes back to preparing the beef. 

That is the last night they are able to have meat. 

Hannibal continues to come over and tells Will that a good chef can make anything out of nothing, but Will sees him struggling to make a cohesive dish out of beets, leeks, and sour cream.

Will helps him slice the odd fruit or vegetable, turn the stove on, pour wine, but other than a few moments like the one Will let slip, nothing happens between them. 

Will spends his days fighting feeling bitter about it. 

As he lays on the couch after setting aside a book Hannibal would have found inapplicable, he sometimes thinks about the creatures and what he will tell Hannibal next about them, but more often, he thinks of how he wishes for a repeat of the mushroom accident. He would even endure the embarrassment just to stop breathing again. 

Now, as he sits on a stool at the kitchen island, across from the space they connected in, he thinks about how maybe he will intentionally mess up a job to lure Hannibal in like he would a fish. Perhaps, Hannibal will see through him, but the thought of that is not unappealing. 

He puts his head in the crook his crossed arms make on the table, closes his eyes, and hopes Hannibal will have time to come over before curfew. 

\---

At noon, Tom gathers the community in the cul-de-sac. He stands at its center with a piece of paper, scribbled on from top to bottom. 

“Hello,” Hannibal greets as Will joins him and Alana, both coming from the Shores’, at the back of the forming semi-circle. 

Hannibal notices that he stops a bit closer to him than he’s bothered to before. 

“As many of you know, maybe all of you,” Tom starts in his ever-grinding voice, “supplies are running low. We need to go out and re-stock, but I don’t want to pull teeth like last time.” He looks over to where Mabel and Stephen are standing, two of the volunteers for the last trip, but only Mabel nods back at him. Stephen looks elsewhere, brows furrowed. “I’ve written up a list of people who are fit to go on trips. There will be one a week, starting today.” The crowd starts to murmur amongst itself. Hannibal raises his eyebrows at Will, but doesn’t get a response. 

Out of the three of them, Will knows he’s the only one on the list. Hannibal is too vital and Alana has a permanent injury. 

“Today, the people that will be going:” Tom starts up again, “Will.” 

Of course. 

Hannibal looks over at him again, and this time Will looks back. At first, Hannibal’s face is unreadable, but then it spots with anger as he looks back to the front. 

“Stephen.” 

Stephen rolls his eyes behind his glasses. The annoyance in them is more prominent in the way they’re magnified. 

“Linda and Alana. Four people.” 

Will looks over to Alana, whose mouth has fallen slightly open. She hadn’t been expecting to be called either, but out of the three of them, Hannibal is most visibly incensed. He looks as if someone has greatly offended him. Or threatened him. 

Some people start to leave, but others press forward to look at the list. Though he is standing at the back, Hannibal is the first to seize it. With it in hand, he catches Tom, who is attempting to slip away. 

“This must be incorrect,” Hannibal tells him as he stops. 

“I didn’t make any mistakes,” Tom replies. 

“You have written here that Alana Bloom is going on a supply trip.” 

Will had expected to hear his own name out of Hannibal’s mouth. 

“I know what it says.” Tom glances away. “And what?”

“You must also know of her injury, then. She has a limp,” Hannibal explains. 

“So do a lot of Rained. Seems like a fair fight to me.” The smirk can be found everywhere: in his eyes, in his voice, except on his face. Will steps up next to Hannibal, taking the list from his hand and passing it back into the crowd. 

“This is incredibly low,” Will says. “Even for a man like you.”

“What kind of man am I?” Tom asks, raising his chin. 

“Did you happen to write yourself in?” Hannibal inquires. 

Tom lowers his voice and glances toward the small crowd, who are now huddled together around the paper. “No, I’m in charge here. I can’t go,” he says blatantly. “Administrative duty.”

“Perhaps, simply take Alana off your list,” Hannibal says. 

“Hell, no.” Tom looks off across the cul-de-sac. “She doesn’t seem too broken up about it anyway.” Hannibal and Will turn to see her hobbling off back toward the Shores’ house, where Elisabeth’s mother greets her. 

Mrs. Shores wasn’t at the meeting and, as it turns out, she isn’t on the list because of Elisabeth. In all, five people are excused from the trips: Hannibal, Tom, the wailing woman, Mrs. Shores, and Paige because of Elisabeth and John respectively. Seemingly, the one-parent-one-child rule doesn’t apply to Will. Or does Tom think that in the event of tragedy, he can pass Wally on to Paige? 

Spite is a funny snake. Will walks down to Paige’s house to ask her to keep Wally through to the evening. 

\---

They take the two cars from the last trip— the Prius and the Sedan, Will and Alana taking the first. Hannibal slips out of the house with her to help them prepare and to see Will again before he goes. 

With the Prius in their driveway, they move in silence, three apparitions. Alana brings out the gun she’s had carefully tucked away and gets into the passenger’s seat, slamming closed the door. Hannibal follows the sound with his own slam of the trunk and walks around to the driver’s side, where Will is waiting for him, arms crossed. He looks distant as he gazes out into the neighborhood. Eventually, his eyes find their way to Hannibal’s and he breaks the silence. 

“I told Paige you would pick Wally up at four o’clock if we aren’t back. Will you?” 

Hannibal nods before he finishes. “Of course. May I ask something of you?” 

Will nods. Hannibal looks past him at the car, through the window at Alana, then back to his expectant face. 

“Do not allow her to weigh you down, Will.”

After a moment, Will understands Hannibal’s rush to talk to Tom. It wasn’t for Alana, and he should have known. The itch in his hands returns, though the darkness of Hannibal’s ask lingers. 

Then, Hannibal adds, “Or anyone for that matter,” as if he can take back or soften the blow of realization. Will looks over his shoulder at the car, then back at Hannibal, and then past him at Paige’s house, where Wally is, before he nods. 

\---

The world outside the gates has hardly changed since they last saw it. A few stray Rained emerge from the woods as they hear their cars approaching and whizzing by. The closer they get to the city, the more frequently these stragglers start to appear, now in threes and fives, some faster, some slower. 

Alana doesn’t look at them, keeping her eyes firmly on the Sedan leading them. Her fingers pull bitterly at each other in her lap. 

“Why didn’t you fight Tom?” Will eventually asks. 

“Don’t you know?” she asks him coldly, tone and weaponization of his abilities both taking Will by surprise. He shuts up. A minute goes by before she sighs and apologizes. 

“It’s fine,” he says, inflection belying his words. “Just thought you were ‘putting an emphasis on self-preservation’.”

“Who would go in my place? Mrs. Lorn?” 

Will recalls the wailing woman. Of course not. 

“I'd like to talk to her,” Alana continues. 

“Anyone told you what happened to her?”

“The Shores’. She lost her daughter and husband right outside the gates and isolated herself in her house afterward. She needs help.” 

“Why don’t you?” Will asks. “Help her.”

Alana is silent for just long enough to broadcast her conflict. “I don’t know if I can be of much help. I’m not exactly in the state of mind to be handling other’s issues. She needs someone like Hannibal.”

“Unbothered by others' problems.”

“Not plagued by them.”

\---

When they stop in front of the Whole Foods, Will is relieved to see the bars in place and the windows intact. 

A few heavily injured Rained hobble toward their cars from the other side of the lot, and the group wastes no time in getting out and knocking on the glass. It takes only a few seconds for the jangle of keys and pats of running feet to be heard. 

Avery emerges, tired-looking, from one of the dim isles and opens up the doors one by one, locking them once more once everyone is inside.

“Hi,” she greets Will as Stephen disperses the rest of the group. Her voice isn’t rough, so he guesses she’s been talking to either herself or her boyfriend. 

“How are you in here? Erik?”

“Locked up. Both of us,” she says, adding on her usual nervous giggle. Even it sags. 

“Come back with us,” Will offers, feeling out of place making the offer, but offering nonetheless. 

She shakes her head for a second time. “I can’t.” She makes as if to walk away, but pauses. “I have something to show you.” 

Will follows her back to the walk-in, where she grabs a piece of yellow notepad paper off a table. On it, there are two columns labeled _me_ and _erik_. 

“I’ve, uh, been talking to him, asking questions, recording what he says.” She hands him the list gingerly, as if it’s worth a billion pounds of gold. She looks to make sure he handles it with just as much care. 

“Does any of it make sense?” He asks as he skims over the questions and answers. 

“No sense, but there are repeat words when I ask about certain stuff,” she says and uses a thin pointer finger to show him. “When I ask him what he’s feeling— specifically with the word _feel_ — there’s _soapbox_ and _glass_ and _town_. See?”

Will nods. 

“Or when I ask him about me, he always says _pond_. Maybe that’s meant to be _Avery_ ,” she says wistfully. 

“There’s a doctor back at the camp,” Will says, “and we’re trying to figure these people out—”

“You can’t keep it,” she says sternly, already knowing what he will be asking. She looks sad, attached. Will hesitates a moment before giving the list back, doing it as gently as he had received it. She takes it and lays it gently back in its place on the table, bright yellow against cold, hard steel. 

Will meets Alana in the bread and pasta aisle. She is tossing loaves into her cart one by one. Will comes to her side to help, clearing out the 9-grain section. 

“Hannibal’s gonna hate these,” he says to her with a grin. 

“You don’t.”

“Doesn’t hurt to indulge in a few Wonderbread grilled cheeses once in a while.”

Alana hums. “It’s good to know that you’re different in at least some facet. You two have become just alike.”

“I suppose we are.” He must admit the thought doesn’t stir negatively within him as it used to. 

“You don’t even deny it anymore,” Alana says, moving on to the next shelf. “It’s sad.”

“It’s not sad because you can’t understand it.”

“No, it was sad to watch you become an accessory to the dismantling of your life. You were fine before him. After him, too.”

Will huffs incredulously next to her. “Really? Is that what you think?”

Alana takes it that she isn’t supposed to think that, and something in Will’s face, a pain toward the long-ago past and the recent past, before and after Hannibal, tells her that what she believes isn’t true. She sets both of her hands on the front of the cart and faces Will full-on. “He isn’t good for you.” Will shakes his head, unwilling to listen. “But you’re good for him.”

“Do you believe that?” Will asks, voice remaining flat. 

“Yes. He doesn’t bother much with appearances anymore, now that people know what he’s capable of, but he always puts the mask on for you, Will. You’re worth the effort to him. He’s nothing but kind to you because he wants you around.”

“You’re acting like I haven’t seen him at his worst. He only shows me the best because I accept him in his darkness. You couldn’t do that.”

“He didn’t deem me worthy enough to.”

That as well, Will thinks, and it inspires a sharp twist of superiority.

She continues as they move down the aisle toward the pasta. “He couldn’t even be serious when we were trying to get through the gates.”

“What did he say?”

“He told them all he was a cannibal, but that it was just a phase.”

Will cracks a smile, at which Alana frowns. 

Two peas in a pod, she says to herself. 

As they begin to load up, Will spots a row of curly pasta lining the top row. 

They meet the others at the front of the store and wait for Avery to come around with the keys. Moments pass before they call out for her. A faint, “One second!” comes from the side, from behind the bathroom door. 

All in a flash, Will’s mind is spurred into action, not even forming a full, coherent idea of what he is doing before he knows he has to do it. Without explaining himself, he runs quietly to the back of the store, into the kitchen. 

His eyes land on the flimsy paper at the center of the table and his fingers close around it, shoving it roughly into his coat pocket. He runs quickly back to the front of the store, only to be met by three questioning stares. He gives them one that says _later_ as the bathroom door opens and closes. 

Avery fishes the keys out of her pocket and gives them all a parting smile before unlocking the doors. 

Walking out with his hand closed around the now-wadded-up paper pains him, and it pains him more when Avery tells him she’ll add onto it for him to see next time he comes. 

\---

Four o’clock brings mixed feelings for Hannibal with its arrival. On one hand, it marks what Will deemed would be a suspiciously long time to be gone, and on the other, it gives Hannibal a chance to prove himself able to take care of Wally. 

He sets the water for the vegetables to boil on the stove and gets dressed to go pick him up. 

\---

“Hi!” Paige greets at the door. Calls and their echoes can be heard from deep inside the house, the sound of childish fun. “I’m so happy you’re here. Wally has been asking about four o’clock for the last two and a half hours.” 

“Is that so?” Hannibal asks. “In that case, I’ll be glad to take him off your hands.” She smiles and gestures for him to wait as she gets him. 

In contrast to the excitement Paige described, the walk back to Hannibal’s house is oddly silent, and Hannibal thinks that the reality that Will might not be coming back has hit the boy and has outweighed any thoughts of fun. 

Wally doesn’t walk in the way a mopey child his age should, rather he looks determined to steel himself, prepare himself for the worst and retreat into a place no one can touch him. He observes a piece of Will in that. A result of a repeatedly and majorly disappointing childhood. 

Barely able to get his chin above the island, Wally rests it uncomfortably on his folded arms and stares across the room at nothing, upset in a way that is truly internal. 

“Would you like to know what is for dinner?” Hannibal offers, washing his hands at the sink. He assumes that Wally’s state won't benefit from added surprises. 

Wally perks up, though his eyes are still glazed over. “You’ll tell me?” he asks cautiously, as if fully anticipating Hannibal’s no. 

“Fava bean and asparagus salad,” Hannibal tells him. 

Wally furrows his brows. “You need the oven for a salad?” 

“For the pistachios, yes.”

Willy grins, just a twitch of the lips, before he comes to Hannibal’s side. The knife glints and swishes as it cuts sharply through watercress and arugula. 

“You said we can do doctor stuff together. When?” Wally asks finally. “After dinner?”

The knife catches the light as Hannibal lays it down next to the cutting board. He considers it and Wally. “Now.”

“What are we gonna do?” 

“Please, get the bandages and antiseptic from below the sink,” Hannibal instructs. He keeps them there for convenience, for when people come to him with cuts and scrapes they fear may turn them into something else. If that were the case, antiseptic and gauze would not save them. 

Meanwhile, Hannibal takes a new knife out of a drawer, and when Wally looks back up, before he can say, “What now?”, Hannibal slices along his own palm in a way that makes his blood spurt. All the while, he keeps his eyes trained on Wally’s expression, but he sees no concern, no shock, no horror. In fact, when the, “What now?” does come, it’s flat and quite underwhelming. It satisfies Hannibal in a different way. An unexpected gift. 

“Now you will wash it out with water,” Hannibal says. Wally sets the supplies down beside the sink, and Hannibal lets himself be led to it. “Cold water will slow the bleeding.” The faucet turns on with a little squeak and Wally brings Hannibal’s hand closer to the stream by the wrist. The water stings momentarily, but is too weak to wash anything away. “You must handle the wound. Do not be afraid.” Without looking up at him or looking disgusted as one might expect, Wally smoothes his thumbs over the wound and the blood flushes away from it and down the drain.

He only mutters a, “Sorry,” when the water reaches Hannibal’s suit sleeve. 

“It is quite alright,” Hannibal replies, still impressed with the boy’s performance. “That will be enough. Take out the gauze now.” 

Wally follows instructions and starts to wrap intuitively, however he deems correct when Hannibal moves closer. It is surprisingly more or less adequate, so Hannibal says little to correct him. Blood seeps through the first, second, and third layers, but only spots the fourth. Wally goes around two more times before Hannibal shows him how to tuck the bandage comfortably. 

When they finish, Wally looks to him expectantly, and Hannibal rewards him with a curious, yet congratulatory smile. “Well done, Wally.” 

After that, Hannibal gets back to work preparing the four plates, and Wally talks at his side like nothing ever happened. 

Twenty minutes later, the front door creaks open and closed, and two voices echo down the hall toward them. Wally perks up, more alert than he has been in the presence of spraying blood. 

“Dad!” he shouts and meets Will at the kitchen doorway. Hannibal watches them embrace for a second, sees the way Will lays a protective hand on Wally’s head after they part. 

Alana looks to Hannibal wiping his hands on a towel behind the counter and quirks an eyebrow, asking a question of how his time with Wally went. Hannibal gives her a reassuring, if dismissive, nod as if to tell her it isn’t her business. She cedes for a moment before her eyes land on his bandaged hand. 

When Hannibal finishes plating, the four of them sit down in the dining room. Elephant questions-- _How was it? How was the store? Many Rained? How many?_ \-- pass before they finally move on. 

“What did you do with Hannibal, Wally?” Will asks as he eats another forkful. 

“We did some doctor stuff,” Wally tells him, a bit excited. “He showed me how to take care of a cut.”

“On himself,” Alana confirms and gets a nod from Wally. “Are you okay with that?” She turns to Will, careful for her tone and phrasing to be unbiased in front of Wally. 

“It’s good practice.” Will shrugs. “We got your favorite pasta at the store,” he tells his son.

“The curly one,” he shines. 

“Must be rotini,” Hannibal says. “No?” Receiving a nod from Will, he adds, “Perhaps, we can make our own in the near future.”

“Sounds like fun, don’t you think, Wally?”

Wally cracks a smile, genuine and glowing as he nods and looks between his dad and Hannibal. 

Will feels Avery’s crumpled paper press uncomfortably against his leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be posted on Monday, 3/8 !


	9. Chapter 9

“A sleepover?” Will asks. His hands are still warm, redness fading slowly after rinsing dish after dish under the scalding water. 

Hannibal had returned to the kitchen to finish the job after opening the door for Paige, who says, “Yeah! The boys had the idea earlier today. Promised I’d ask, but if you’re uncomfortable with that—”

“No,” Will interrupts, “no, it’s great.” He looks at Wally, who has been standing at his side, throwing hopeful glances up at him. The boy allows himself a smile now. “I’ll bring him by in 10 minutes if that works for you. We’ll just get his things from the house.” 

“Awesome,” she says to Will, and then down to Wally: “See you in a few, Bud.”

 _Bud_. 

It’s parental, familiar, but Wally doesn’t react in any way besides a polite, if comfortable, nod. 

He doesn’t take to her as he does to Hannibal. 

When Hannibal talks, there is enthusiasm and intrigue that is at times unadulterated on a face that is determined to stay too neutral for its age. In those moments, it feels like something greater is present between the three of them, and it promises to grow. Trust? Investment? Perhaps, the former for Hannibal. 

Once they’ve made it across the street to their house, Will sends Wally up to retrieve his toothbrush, toothpaste, and a book if he will want to read before bed. 

Will goes to Wally’s room to pick out a change of clothes to sleep in and for the next day. A familiar wave of guilt, the arrival of which Will has become accustomed to in this house, splashes in shivers against his skin as he goes through the clothing of another child to dress his own. He has done the laundry once now, and he recalls the feeling of the fabric between his fingers as he hung the clothes back up. The thread had an angry quality to it, resentful of him and their new wearer, mournful of the previous. 

He had told Hannibal about this once post-dinner, and he had offered to do the hanging for him. Will declined, since Wally is the one who has to wear them. The least Will can do is hang. 

Blissfully unaware of angry threads or resentful sleeves, Wally stuffs the clothes in a backpack they found and marches down the street with his arms looped through it, a few steps ahead of Will in his giddiness. He isn’t like Will. He isn’t like Abigail. 

Upon re-entering his house, Will follows his body’s default B-line to the kitchen. 

He stops in the aisle across from his and Hannibal’s connecting place. With no one to see him and no one to judge, he runs his shoe over the place where they stood, sole creeping over the spaces between tiles. The moment soaks into him with a vivid potency that pleads to be re-lived. 

He closes his eyes to focus on it better, but when all visual is taken away, a small stinging spreading from his pocket grabs his attention. After a moment, it begins to burn with a greater heat that turns unbearable. Will shoves his hand in his pocket, but Avery’s paper is smushed way at the bottom. It takes him a few crawling seconds to get it out, and then to unfold it. The pencil is smudged and the paper it’s on is limp, crawling with veins from being crumpled and re-crumpled. 

After a moment, he turns on the kettle and reads over the words again while he waits for it to heat. 

\---

When he enters the living room, Hannibal is already sitting in his armchair, content steady on his face. Will has come to expect Hannibal after dinner, gotten used to making two cups of coffee instead of one. 

After what Alana told him, Will wonders if this content expression is part of Hannibal’s mask, part of his effort to alleviate the guilt Will feels from making him wait while he reminisced and stressed in the kitchen because, as it is, he looks like he would have been fine to die waiting in the chair. 

When he sees Will, he rises, accepting his cup. 

“Sorry I took so long, I,” Will trails off, “yeah, sorry.” 

“Quite alright. I have gotten much practice waiting over the years.” Hannibal takes a careful sip, eyeing Will over the rim. Will can identify a slight when it’s dealt, and that wasn’t one. 

He approaches the fireplace, Hannibal close behind him. He wishes they were closer. 

Setting his cup in its place on the mantle, Will reaches into his pocket again, this time retrieving the paper more easily. Though it doesn’t seem like it's shoved down at the bottom of a narrow well anymore, unfolding it again still makes his fingertips ache.

Hannibal must catch the discomfort in his expression or maybe, Will thinks, he catches the shame wafting off the paper itself. He plucks it gently from Will’s hands, brushing their fingers together and sending a warm shiver through him. Hannibal smoothes the paper out palm against palm before peering at it. 

“Avery,” he reads. “The woman at the Whole Foods.” 

Will nods. “And Erik, her boyfriend who Changed. She’s been talking to him and there’s been some correlation. I thought you might find it interesting.”

“And so you elected to steal it.” 

Will throws him a fiery look, diluted only by his hesitancy to answer. He leaves the fireplace, pacing out into the room. “She wasn’t going to use it,” he says, “not in any way that can be significant.”

Hannibal, who was sparing Will the scrutiny of his gaze, finally looks up from the words. “It seems your choice was for the greater good, yet you berate yourself for the decision.” Will stares back at him from his place between the arm chairs before coming closer. “You and righteous action have become close kin. The urge to save is not a dark one.” 

Will glances between Hannibal’s eyes and the note, trying to decide whether that’s a sentiment he agrees with. “Darkness can come of light action.”

“What darkness are you anticipating, Will?” 

Will shakes his head, the dread of returning to the Whole Foods beginning to weigh on him weeks in advance. After a moment, Hannibal continues, folding the note in half, and then again and again. “Based on the patterns, the correlations, as you had said, I suspect some type of aphasia caused by whatever kind of brain damage these creatures have suffered. A conglomeration of neurological changes, perhaps.”

“Like what?” Will asks. 

“I cannot be sure without any references. As I recall, a few doctors lived in this neighborhood before the Rained took over.”

“Books,” Will says, glancing at the clock ticking away on the wall behind him. There are still a few hours before curfew. 

A stinging warmth spreads through his veins as he recalls how he would thumb through the books in Hannibal’s office on occasion. Hannibal would watch him from below, telling him stories of how the one he was holding came into his possession. “Tom will never give us the key,” Will states.

“No, he will not.” Hannibal offers Will the yellow page, but when he doesn’t take it back, he slides the neat square into his own pocket. “Perhaps, somebody else will be more understanding.” 

\---

Hannibal and Will get lucky when Stephen comes to the door over Mabel, or as they can tell by the clunky pair of boots just inside the door, Tom. 

Stephen’s eyes shine behind his thick glasses as he greets him. He laces his fingers together in front of him while he waits for them to talk. The annoyance from earlier in the day has only partially dissipated, but he clearly does his best to cover it up for them. 

“We’ve come to ask a favor of you,” Hannibal begins. 

“Oh?” Stephen asks, shifting, interested. 

“There is a treatment for Elizabeth’s leg that has unfortunately escaped me, and I am afraid it’s important. You had mentioned there being several doctors in the neighborhood, so we came by to see if we could gain access to their libraries.”

Stephen gives a short hum, considering. “Tom doesn’t want you sneaking around.”

“He needn’t know of our arrangement,” Hannibal says, to which Stephen quirks an eyebrow. 

“Our secret,” Will chimes in, to which he seems more receptive, the idea of sharing something with the two enticing. 

“And I shouldn’t be questioning your involvement,” he asks Will. 

“I can assure you, nothing sinister,” Hannibal answers. “I will require assistance carrying the books back to my home is all.”

“I would prefer you keep everything there. Don’t want to attract any special attention,” Stephen says, glancing over his shoulder. 

“He’s here, then. Tom,” Hannibal says. 

Stephen nods and pushes up his glasses. “Been fucking my mom, actually.” He lets a silence settle in before he turns on his heel and says, “One second.” 

He returns with a small key with four small numbers engraved on it, plopping it in Will’s outstretched palm. “1107, just up the street.”

\---

They make their way through the dark, grand halls of 1107 in silence. Intuitively, Hannibal leads them upstairs, where the study is in his old home. Surely enough, they find it at the end of one of the halls. 

Even without turning the lights on, Will can tell that it’s just as big, if not bigger, than Hannibal’s office, though lacking a second tier and a fireplace. Anticipation builds as Hannibal moves to draw the heavy curtains on the windows, successfully blocking out whatever moonlight there was. 

The anticipation goes as quickly as it came, however, when they turn on the lights and reveal the room truly. The color of the walls is drab at best, a dirty creme. The room is decorated extravagantly, but without the gentle touch of an artist. In short, it’s nothing like Hannibal’s office. 

Will catches his disappointment in his throat and moves toward the shelves of books at the far wall, reminding himself that they aren’t here to reminisce. Still, he finds himself saying, “When we fled the house, I found myself driving to your office.” He tries to make it sound off-handed. “Just mindlessly.” 

Hannibal starts scanning the spines of books at the other end of the shelves. “It would make sense that it would hold significance for you.” 

Will lets go of a chuckle. “Yeah. It was the room I visited most in my memory palace.” The admission feels like giving away a part of himself because he has never shared it with anybody. He made sure to hide his escapades carefully from Molly as if she could find physical evidence of them outside of Will’s mind. “Uh, what am I looking for exactly?” 

Hannibal looks over. “Anything with aphasia or brain damage on the whole. You’d be wiser to start here.” He gestures a shelf over, one closer to him. After a moment, after Will begins searching the new shelf, he adds, “You used your mind palace, then. To visit me.”

“Often,” Will says, shifting his eyes down a row. He can’t bring himself to meet Hannibal’s eyes, which he can feel searching him instead of the books. 

“Did we converse as we used to in your mind palace? Or did we simply enjoy each other’s company?” 

“There was no enjoyment in the beginning.” Will frowns. “Only confrontation.” 

“You were angry with me,” Hannibal says, “for going to jail.” 

“For listening to me, for leaving me.”

Something in Hannibal shifts at the words, and he knows he made the correct promise when he first saw Will here, to never leave him. Now, he makes himself a new promise: to be as close as he can, always. Their hours apart won’t do anymore. He comes to stand next to Will, tower over him as he crouches down to see the books at the bottom. 

“I was angry with myself later when things started to fade,” Will continues. His fingers, which have been ghosting along the ridges of spines, settle on one, pulling it out. He hands it up to Hannibal, finally seeing his face. He gives Will a hum and he watches Hannibal’s lips press and turn up into a satisfied line. “Did you ever visit me?” Will asks. 

Crouching down beside him to see the rest of the books lined up there, Hannibal makes sure their knees brush in the lightest and most accidental-seeming way. “I took to other methods of preservation, though I did fantasize about our reunion often. And often, I would also find myself with you in my office. That is where you always revealed yourself to me.”

The roles having switched, Hannibal looking down at the books and Will now looking at Hannibal, Will catches a familiar yearning in the lines of his face, on the end syllables of his words and it makes his insides flip. 

The time before curfew is spent going through a few of the many relevant books they ended up finding. Though most of what’s written means nothing to Will, he isn’t afraid to ask and is happy to listen to Hannibal’s explanations. 

Quarter to 9, they turn off the lights, leaving their books face down and open, and leave 1107. Though it isn’t necessary, they do their best to sneak across the street from the house and keep to the shadows until they are far enough to not be associated with coming out of it anymore. 

At Hannibal’s house, they part, and he watches Will cross to his own, watches him enter and shut the door. He does the same just for show. 

\---

Will wakes up to the darkness of his room and to warm puffs of air at his side that turn into words. Hannibal’s. He rolls over to see the silhouette of him standing over his bed.

“What time is it?” Will murmurs, stretching upward. 

“Past curfew I’m afraid. You had something to show me today, and now I wish to return the favor.”

“Can it wait ‘till morning?” Will asks, now more awake, and unfortunately so in his eyes. 

“Perhaps it can, but I wish not to. Please, come.” 

Will nods silently and gets dressed just the same, following Hannibal through the house to the door. In the kitchen, he catches a glimpse of the time on the microwave. It reads 3:23 A.M., which makes Will groan internally. 

Outside, this time they sneak with purpose, through air that has turned more frigid in the wee hours of the morning. All the windows on the street are dark, and Will glances at one of Paige’s, where he knows Wally is. 

In the night, a strange air of security settles around the community, whether it's because of the quiet that surrounds them, the fact that he can’t see the ominous forest, or the gentle pad of Hannibal’s shoes against the pavement in front of him. 

They make it to the house with no trouble and make it through another series of dark halls. Hannibal seems to have them memorized already. 

When they enter the office, Will doesn’t notice a change, but when Hannibal turns the lights on, Will’s hands start to itch for contact again. 

Hannibal has moved all the furniture around to resemble his office. Two chairs stand facing each other in the center, Hannibal’s desk is to their right, the bookshelves now stand at the wall behind what will be Will’s chair, and he has even put some trinket on a platform to represent the stag statue. 

The pure attention of the action is enough to overwhelm Will. He turns to Hannibal, who is watching his reaction closely and utters a, “Thank you,” that comes from deep inside. 

Given the framework, Will’s mind fills in the gaps and suddenly, they are both back in the office. The walls turn from ugly creme to gray and red. Will has just walked in for a session. A special one that he had to request and Hannibal could miraculously accommodate. 

“Please, sit,” Hannibal says, gesturing to Will’s chair. Will nods, heading over and sinking in, watching Hannibal take his place across from him. 

As Will looks around now, he sees there are more books open than when they left before, some bookmarked, some with pages creased. 

“Do you have a verdict?” Will asks. 

“More of a hypothesis,” Hannibal answers. “I believe there is substantial damage done to the temporal lobe, resulting in something akin to Wernicke’s aphasia. Long, nonsensical sentences plus the unawareness of these mistakes are hallmark symptoms.” 

“They think they’re making sense,” Will says. His eyes wander Hannibal’s form. The way he is sitting, attentive, with all his attention on Will, makes him feel like the only thing in the world worth looking at. The urge to be closer returns, though the toes of their shoes are already mere inches apart, just as they had been the first time they made coffee at Will’s house. “They could be unaware that what they’re doing is destructive, it could make perfect sense in their minds.” Hannibal nods to that. “If it truly is neurological, can you fix it? One of them?”

“Though I am positive there are other forces at work, I could try,” Hannibal tells him. 

“How could you know?” Will asks. 

“I believe a dissection would be in order.” Hannibal looks out the window toward the forest, directing Will’s gaze there as well. The danger of acquiring a brain dawns on him, having to seek one of them out beyond the wall, most likely at night. 

“You would do that?” 

Hannibal turns back toward him. “Anything to please you.”

Once again, Will is taken aback by Hannibal’s willingness to lay out his feelings. Alana's words play in his mind as well as his own intuition. “Why?” he questions, though a few things are coming together on their own in his mind. The room, the willingness to put himself in danger. 

“I told you I would help you understand them. That promise has no bounds, as my other promises to you.” 

The promise to prove himself with Wally. 

There was a hint of hesitance to his answer, the gentle weighing of odds. The chances he will be rejected once more and the probability of being accepted for the first time by the one he’s been chasing for years and years. 

At this vulnerability, the urge to come closer becomes overwhelming, so Will stands and walks toward the blocked windows instead. From there, he delivers his own verdict: “You love me, Hannibal. Don’t you?” The question comes out as more of a statement. 

Shaking the oh-so-rare expression of surprise, Hannibal rises and moves to stand next to Will. His expression delivers a soft ‘yes’ mixed with the hesitance in his previous answer, this time unspoken. 

Will, finally, tripping over thoughts and signs, musters the courage to reach out. He goes for Hannibal’s hand, which comes to meet his between them. Will’s touch is light, like a cool, spring rain against Hannibal’s skin. It makes him want to dissolve into the earth and take Will with him, so that they can grow together anew, intertwined. 

“Don’t you?” Will repeats. 

“If you allow me to,” Hannibal says, eyes trained on Will, who is looking at their hands between them. 

It’s the part of the memory palace scene Will didn’t get to finish on the day of the attack. “I allow you,” he says, looking up just in time to see a blatant display of gratitude adorn Hannibal’s features. 

Seconds later, Hannibal is leaning in and their lips are connecting in all parts longing, trust, and gratitude. Gratitude that they are here and that the chase is over. The connection demands nothing, but offers everything, and Will takes. 

he presses into Hannibal, unlinking their hands and using one to pull him closer. He has never felt so grounded, and Hannibal has never felt so light. 

Will no longer has to suppress the itch to touch as he threads a hand into Hannibal’s hair and places another on his chest. Hannibal licks along Will’s bottom lip, and Will welcomes him into his mouth with a sigh. 

They part only after what seems like blissful hours, full to the brim with each other, but looking like they wouldn’t mind overflowing. In this office, Hannibal’s office, nothing exists except for them and their books and their lips and bodies. 

Exactly how it was predestined to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be posted on Wednesday, 3/17! I apologize for skipping last week, something came up for me :'-(


End file.
